This piece by Radley Balko is the first I had heard of this case (thanks to the emailers), and I am appalled:
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.
As someone who fears/dislikes excessive government authority (although not enough to move to Montana and go off the grid), hates the war on drugs, loathes ‘no-knock’ raids an d all the other little ‘goodies’ that have come with the war on drugs (property seizures, etc.), and is opposed the death penalty, a case doesn’t get any worse than this. In fact, this is it- this is THE nightmare scenario, and I have a hard time thinking this is anything about anything other than race and the police covering their asses.
More here, and here is the technorati search for Cory Maye, who from what I can tell is an innocent man condemned to death for sleeping in his own bed.