While I've been a critic of libertarianism in the past, especially on my blog, I have to say that Radley's devotion to rights issues and injustices have really moved me to reconsider my criticism.

drug use has universally been portrayed as nearly satanic, the cause of the ruin of countless (minority) lives and families. much easier to get the general population behind a "war" on something they know little about, and have been trained to be scared sh*tless of.

  Why are not the problems associated with use of alcohol (or illegal drugs) by non-addicts not significant? If someone dies of an ocverdose or injures himself or others under the influence is it less important?

  What about the addicts of both  who don't ruin their lives? I've known "drunks and druggies"  who manage to maintain professional and personal lives despite chronic and severe abuse that would be described as indication of addiction by most.

  I don't advocate outright legalization for any currently illegal drug other than marijuana, which i believe is indisputably less dangerous than alcohol any way you want to look at it (to the extent there is any truth to the "gateway" theory,  I think that is due to the fact marijuana is illegal and thus puts its procurers at gates through which other drugs pass and if it was sold as is alcohol the  people would not be at those gates).

  I don't have an answer for the drug problem and I don't minimize the extreme harm caysed many people directly and indirectly by drug abuse. 25 years ago, I tended to think outright  legalization was a good idea but age, wisdom and much experience viewing people whose lives have been ruined have led me to conclude that the simple-minded "legalize it" solution to a very complex problem would do more harm than good.

  On the other hand, I think it is equally true that our current simple-minded "lock 'em up for punishment" approach does more harm than good.

 I often point out here that people mislead by grossly overstating criminal sanctions for mere users in an effort to make it sound as if snorting a line or hitting the pipe is risking prison and the serious penalties are directed almost exclusively at those involved in distribution, but the fact is many people distribute only to maintain their own habit and not to make money, and those people often do often face incredibly severe punishment.

  I don't favor legalization but I do favor major reform where those motivated by the need for drugs are not imprisoned but referred for treatment. Treatment has a very poor record of success but giving people an opportunity to change before imposing severe punishment is humane and just in my opinion.

The officers claimed they knocked, but having gone to the trouble of securing a "no knock" warrant, that claim is suspect.

The police broke down Maye's door during a drug raid in Mississippi. The officers claimed they knocked, but having gone to the trouble of securing a "no knock" warrant, that claim is suspect. Maye, not realizing that the people invading his house in the middle of the night were police officers and concerned about the safety of his young daughter, shot an intruder without realizing he was shooting a police officer. The officer turned out to be the son of the police chief. The police turned out to have busted down the wrong door;

  Was it not shown that the warrant did not authorize "no knock" entry and that there were warrants for each of the adjoining units?

  It would appear that the only questions would go to mens rea and justification issues. He had a trial and it appears that the jury was persuaded he did not act in justifiable self-defense or defense of others and that it was not a mistake or accident, etc.

  Upon review, it was determined that he did not receive effective assistance of counsel in the capital sentencing phase and the death sentence was vacated and he was sentenced to life.

  Obviously, the jury resolved issues pertaining to credibility against him. That's the province of juries. The trial court on a motion for nre trial or JOA and appellate courts are not to disturb the credibility determinations of juries unless those  determinations are found to rest on no rational basis.

 In the absence of other issues showing he did not receive a fair trial, that people who were not on the jury have a different view of credibility is of little moment. What if any issues were presented tending to show that he did not receive a fair trial with regard to the guilt phase of the trial?

i am also convinced that santa claus is gonna shimmy down my chimney, with that new, $1,200 extreme core duo cpu i've been wanting.

  In terms of proof, as in all cases involving determinations of mental states, a jury must make inferences from the evidence presented at trial. There is no method for looking into a person's mind and downloading a stored image of his mental stateat the moment of the act. Where one side presents the argument an act was knowing and intentional and without justification  the other argues the act was doe without knowledge and intent or was justified, what we need to know is what evidence each side presented to support the inferences it wished the jury to provide.

  Then we need to know if the jury did not hear evidence probative to possible inferences due to either rulings of the court or failures of counsel. We also need to know if the jury was allowed to hear evidence it should not have heard because it either wasn't relevant or the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion, misleading, etc. substantiall outweighed it's probative value.

  If there is some evidence tending to show the jury was prejudiced either by exposure to extra-judicial information about the case or more generalized attitudes and beliefs, we need to hear it and not allow the sort of prejudices that are supposed to be ferreted out (It's Mississippi rednecks framing a black man, etc) lead us to conclusions with no evidentiary support.
   The man was convicted of intentional homicide of a police officer. That means the jury was persuaded that knowing  the target was a police officer Maye used a deadly weapon with appreciation of the likelihood death or serious injury could result. There appears to have been ample evidence presented to support that theory and evidently the jury found the evidence persuasive.

 He was not convicted of any of the possible lesser homicide offenses. Was the jury instructed as to any lesser included offenses? If not, why not? Tactical decision of the defense? Failure of the defense to understand lesser includeds might be implicated Refusal of the court to instruct?

  These are just a few examples of the type of information needed to asses this case.

  All I see here is one guy writing that he believes the defendant, and others due to predisposition agreeing or disagreeing with him based on little or no knowledge of what happened at the trial. It's not entirely clear to me but it seems that Radley may not have attended any of the trial let alone all of it, so it seems an exraorinary leap of faith to assume he is in a better position to assess the credibility of the witnesses and the persuasiveness of the evidence than the jurors who actually heard the testimony and had opportunity to assess the demeanor of the witnesses. One taking on this heavy burden of retrospective, second-hand reassessment, needs to do a lot more than "I like and believe the guy and find the version accepted by the jury implausible.

  Most of what is being discussed here is of little or no probative value with regard to the ultimate issue. The whole shebang about the SW is really largely a red herring.

  The validity or invalidity of the warrant could have no impact on Maye's mental state. If he did not know the victim was an officer and reasonably apprehended fear of death or serious injury to himself or others he would be justified in shooting even if the warrant was perfectly valid. Conversely, a defective warrant would not be justification for shooting a person he knew was an officer.

   Indirectly, the warrant might have some relatively slight inferential value in that if it was an invalid warrant or the police did in fact have the wrong residence, a juror might but would not be inescapably compelled to conclude it was less likely he knew it was the cops as compared to if the warrant was based upon probable cause and named that residence because in the latter the juror might, but again would not be compelled to infer, that Maye had reason to expect it was the police. In my opinion both of those are exceedingly weak inferences both ways.

  As the jury heard testimony about the events at the scene in the moments before shooting, it is diffcult to believe that exceedingly weak indirtect inferences would have made a diffference when the logical conclusion is the jury would base its decision on what it believed actually happened  at the scene that would have or would not have made him aware it was the police.

   I'd tend to agree that Maye's not firing all his rounds supports an inference he did not know it was the police but, I don't think it is such a strong inference as would necessarily outweigh other inferenceds drawn from other facts. We still don't know what other facts were presented though.

  As for the police not shooting back, I'd suspect  most people would be more likely to draw inferences unfavorable to Maye from that. That he shot a cop and lived to tell, militates against an inference of gung-ho out-of-control cops terrorizing an innocent man. It also might suggest to some the police were not acting in a manner with a reasonable apprehension of imminent harm to Maye. some might even state think that if it was an unannounced entry the police would certainly have weapons deployed precisely because they don't want to get shot and would understand the chances of that are significantly greater if they do not announce prior to entry.

  What we need is a thorough summary of what Maye and other witnesses including the police or anyone else present testified happened at the scene?

  I have no dog in this fight, and am certainly not predisposed to believe the police, but so far i have seen nothing here other than a writer saying he believes the self-serving version provided over the defendant.  There may well be excellent reasons to believe him but they have not been provided thus far.