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.