Circuit Court Judge Prentiss Harrell has just signed a plea agreement with the state of Mississippi. Maye has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter, resentenced to ten years in prison, which is time already served. he will be sent to Rankin County for processing, and will be home with his family in a matter of days.



More, from Radley Balko:

I had originally planned to post a video interview with Cory Maye for you this afternoon. But he’s understandably overwhelmed with emotion today. I’ll touch a bit more on this in a piece I’m working on for Huffington Post, but just after the plea was finalized, Maye read a statement he had written to the family of Ron Jones, Jr.. He then left the courtroom for a witness room in the back. I went in to talk with him. Cory Maye always smiles. Bob Evans, his attorney, thinks it may have rubbed the jury the wrong way during his trial. Evans says even on the day he was sentenced to death, he was smiling. But just moments after learning he’d soon be free this morning, Cory Maye wasn’t smiling. His eyes were dropping tears.

I asked him what he was thinking. He started to answer, but couldn’t. So, Evans, Maye, attorney Ben Vernia and I sat for a few moments in silence. Evans then asked, “You’re thinking about Ron, aren’t you? About the Jones family?”

Maye nodded, and dropped his head into his hand.

“I can’t tell you how many times that happens,” Evans told me later. “He grieves for them.”

Until that moment, it’s an aspect of this story I don’t think I had really considered. It must be an incredible burden to know you’ve taken another man’s life, that you’ve caused a pain and sense of loss for all the people who knew and loved that person, and that for them, that pain and loss are permanent.

I’ve noted more than a few times here that Officer Ron Jones, Jr., was well-liked in this community, even among blacks, which is something that can’t be said of many white police officers in the area. Independent of how convinced Cory Maye, his family, his attorneys, or anyone else may be of his legal or moral innocence, independent of the fact that he was put in an awful predicament set in place by bad policies and bad judgment, independent of all of that, he will still always know that he killed a man, a man he respected, a man he now knows meant him no real harm the night all this happened. That’s a hell of a thing to carry around. And it isn’t something he’ll leave behind with his orange jumpsuit.

I took the photo above at the Lawrence County Jail, obviously in a lighter moment. It was a few hours after this morning’s plea. Maye had just told us he wanted to and of take his kids to Disneyland, then described the pot of gumbo his mother would be cooking for his homecoming celebration. The smile came back.

Since he wasn’t up for the video, Maye did ask me to pass along a note he wrote this morning to the people who have written him, advocated for him on the Internet, and otherwise supported him over the years.

So here’s a letter to you, from him:

Onward and upward,
airforce

I've been writing about the Cory Maye case for nearly eight years now, but many folks will undoubtedly be unfamiliar with him. Radley Balko has a short piece up at the [b]Huffington Post[/b] which provides a lot of background to the case .

Onward and upward,
airforce

Here is the Wikipedia entry for Cory Maye.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Here\'s an article about the case in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger[/b].

And this, from the Associated press:

Onward and upward,
airforce

Yeah, the coercive effect of being locked up is usually the big determining factor on whether or not someone takes a plea agreement in order to have a defined sentence instead of being held under high security conditions and being treated like a rabid dog indefinitely.

You look at the statistics of plea bargains compared to people going to trial and possibly winning, then adjust for whether they were on pretrial release and on release pending appeal, vs got locked up for the duration starting with their arrest date, and the figures show that those who get locked up to begin with nearly always take a plea bargain rather than remain locked up indefinitely, and among those who get locked up to begin with and attempt to go to trial, the chances of them not just losing at trial, but getting more charges while locked up on pretrial confinement increase exponentially, and increase with severity when you consider the incentives that everyone from other inmates to facility staff has in making sure the government does not just win a conviction, but wins convictions with more prison time for an increased severity of offense if someone shows such defiance as playing the trial game and going all the way to trial.

Starvation, beating, brainwashing and forced administration of mind altering drugs (most of the "psych meds" readily handed out at jail and prison facilities are well known to have hypnotic side effects, IE, the subject becomes more easily suggestible to both overt and covert mind control techniques.)

I would rather he were exonerated, and compensated for the time he spent in prison. But realistically, Mr. Maye has been locked up for nearly ten years. It's time for him to be with his family.

But that doesn't mean we can't push for a pardon. We need to get onto Gov. Haley Barbour to grant him one.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Radley Balko has a long article up at the Huffington Post on how Cory Maye was freed . The full story behind the plea bargain that ended with him walking free.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Cory Maye finally walked out the doors of the Rankin County Jail today, a free man. Strangely, his attorneys were not advised prior to his release, but he is now home with his family.

Onward and upward,
airforce