Radley Balko at The Agitator, an outstanding blog, has a fascinating, but terrible, story about Cory Maye, a black man who sits on death row after being convicted of shooting a white police officer who stormed the wrong home in a drug bust gone wrong.

Here are the basics, but read the story for the full picture:

Let's summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

The story gets more bizarre from there.

Such problems are not uncommon when no-knock search warrants (or similary rapid entry warrants) are used. Such warrants, which are supposed to be restricted to instances in which there is a specific heightened danger to the officers because of the subject's violent past or other specific factors, are often abused in drug raids, where they are often used to gain the element of surprise even when no additional danger seems likely.

Update:

Radley has done some further investigation, reported here, where he preliminarily confirms that the search warrant did not name Cory Maye, but rather his neighbor. He offers a transcipt of his conversation with the court clerk of Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi, who he asked to skim the search warrant before sending it to him:

Her: You want me to read the whole thing? It's very long.

Me: No, that's okay. I just have a hunch about what's in it that I was hoping you could check out for me.

Her: What would you like me to look for?

Me: Are you familiar with the Cory Maye case?

Her: Oh, yes. I know what happened.

Me: My guess is that you'll find the name of Jaimie Wilson on that warrant, but you won't find the name of Cory Maye. Could you check to satisfy my curiosity before you send me a copy?

Her: Okay. Let's see.... Jaimie....

Me: Wilson...

Her: Yes, now I see his name is on the warrant. Jaimie Wilson.

Me: Now look for Cory Maye.

Her: Silence.

Me: Corey Maye?

Her: Silence.

Me: Is he in there anywhere?

Her: Oh my.

A 50-year-old grandmother of five is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow for charges relating to her refusal to produce identification on a public bus that passed through the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, CO. Apparently, everyone aboard the public bus, not just those who exit at the Federal Center - a large complex that has offices for agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Land Management - must produce IDs for inspection by federal guards. Deborah Davis, whose work commute put her on a bus that passed through the Federal Center, initially complied with the requests but later refused, citing her constitutional rights.

It's important to note that her position is different from that of Dudley Hiibel in last year's Supreme Court case, where the Court ruled that a criminal suspect may be required to identify himself. Davis was not a criminal suspect, but merely a passenger on a bus that passed through a federal area. However, even in her case, I suspect that a judge will defer to the federal government's assertion that such ID checks are necessary for security on federal property.

While her legal position may be rather tenuous, I admire her political stance and her spirit. I also really like a few of the quotes from articles covering the event about how the ID check has less to do with security and more to do with creating an atmosphere of obedience:

"It's wrong," she [Davis] said Monday. "It's not even security. It's just a lesson in compliance - the big guys pushing the little guys around."

and

According to Davis, the guards barely glance at the IDs, let alone write down names or check them against a list.

"It's just an obedience test," says Gail Johnson, a lawyer recruited to represent Davis by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. "It does nothing for security."


UPDATE: According to Papers Please, charges against Davis have been dropped.

This week sees the debut of Cato Unbound, a new website devoted to promoting big-picture intellectual discussions led by a provocative article from a leading thinker and thoughtful responses from other leading thinkers.

In their inaugural discussion, Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan, founder of the public choice school of economics, offers a proposal on new amendments to the Constitution. Responding to Buchanan's proposal will be Akhil Reed Amar, Judge Alex Kozinski, and William A. Niskanen.

Buchanan fires the opening salvo by proposing three new amendments: fiscal responsibility, political nondiscrimination, and natural liberty:

Fiscal irresponsibility stares us in the face and cries out for correction. The near-total disregard for any pretense of generality in the distribution of apparent governmental largesse, along with the increasing manipulation of the tax structure, can only be turned around by constitutional prohibition of discrimination. Existing rules, as interpreted, have not been successful in guaranteeing the natural liberty of citizens to engage in voluntary exchange, both among themselves within the political jurisdiction and with others beyond national boundaries.

Buchanan himself acknowledges that his third proposed amendment, natural liberty, is a radical proposal:

The third proposal, treated here, is dramatically different because its endorsement, even as principle, requires rethinking the two-century presumption that governmental action is preferred to that generated through markets. The mind-set that elevates collective action to its idealized image while ignoring the reality of its operation must be exorcised, and especially as this mind-set has come to dominate legal interpretation after the usurpation of constitutional limits in the Roosevelt era.

Buchanan also acknowledges that although his proposed amendments are designed generally to control the size and influence of government, they are not foolproof:

As already noted, the three basic changes would not, in themselves, insure against a governmental sector that is Leviathan-like in size. The proposals are procedural rather than substantive. They would not prevent constituencies, through ordinary democratic processes, from choosing to levy general tax rates sufficient to finance a massive budget that embodies generalized benefits. Perhaps the culture of dependence is so entrenched in public attitudes that a large and cumbersome nonproductive welfare state remains in prospect. The test should be carried out, nonetheless, before proposals are advanced that reflect abandonment of the fundamental democratic faith.

Akhil Reed Amar's response, a more technical, legal rebuttal that raises a lot of questions but answers few, has already been posted.

I myself am most looking forward to Judge Kozinski's contribution to the discussion.