I’m more worried about Cory Maye than Casey Anthony

By David McElroy · July 6, 2011

When the news came Tuesday that Casey Anthony had been found not guilty in the murder of her daughter, much of the country screamed in outrage that a woman might be getting away with murder. I wish at least half of that outrage could be mustered for the innocent people sitting in prisons today.

I grew up believing that police officers were our friends and that the legal system protected the rights of the innocent. I’ve lost a lot of faith in both of those beliefs. Things I’ve seen and read lead me to believe the an arrogant, out-of-control police culture has taken root — and that an overburdened, inadequate and cynical legal system has lost the ability to protect those who are innocent.

I’m much, much more worried about these issues than I am in the possibility that one cold, remorseless and lying woman might have gotten away with causing her child’s death.

Have you heard of Cory Maye? If it hadn’t been for the tireless work of Radley Balko while he was at Reason magazine, I’d have never heard of him. (Click here to watch an excellent 24-minute video produced by Reason.TV about the case. And click here for the archives of stories about Maye at Balko’s blog, The Agitator, which is on my personal list of sites to check ever day.) And if Balko and some other people hadn’t brought serious legal talent to bear, Maye would still be sitting on death row in a Mississippi prison for murder when he was clearly only guilty of trying to protect his daughter from unidentified men with guns when police raided his home by mistake. Instead, he’s now awaiting release after paperwork is processed. In a plea deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter to avoid another trial — because he can get out of prison now because of the time he’s already served.

The simple truth is that many, many people in this country are sitting in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Many prosecutors don’t care, because their jobs are based on convicting people, not on whether justice is served. Many in the public (probably most) don’t care, because they truly believe that if police charge someone, he’s probably guilty. Further, they believe that if a jury has convicted a person, he’s almost certainly guilty. And if a few innocent people go to prison along the way, well, that’s the price to be paid for “law and order.”

It would be hard to accuse a U.S. Founding Father of being “soft on crime,” but John Adams was more worried about protecting the innocent than punishing the guilty. He said:

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

Casey Anthony was probably guilty of something. From what I know — and that’s not a lot — it seems that she’s cold, remorseless and dishonest. (The jury convicted her of lying to police.) But there’s no proof that she killed her daughter. To convict her of murder because we don’t like her — or because we simply have the gut feeling that she must have killed Caylee — isn’t justice. It’s forming a lynch mob.

A guilty woman might walk out of prison Wednesday, but many, many innocent men and women are sitting in U.S. prisons today. I’m far more outraged by their false imprisonment than by this one woman possibly getting away with a crime. Don’t let your emotional need for vengeance outweigh your eagerness to pursue justice for the innocent.

Note: After this story was written, Radley Balko posted a new story explaining the details of the plea agreement that allowed Cory Maye to go free.

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Something small just made me happy. The specifics don’t matter, but I found myself smiling and I felt a kind of warm joy filling my heart and mind. In that brief moment of ecstasy, I felt the irrational desire to talk with a particular person. It wasn’t a calculated thought or a rational want. It wasn’t even that I wanted to tell the person about this particular thing. I simply felt ecstatic joy — and I somehow connected that feeling to this person. I can’t explain it. If we’re wise, we’ll pay attention to such moments, because the instincts of our hearts and minds often know more truth than our conscious and rational brains do. The same thing can be true in moments of great pain and suffering. If we pay attention to who our hearts are drawn to in such moments — of extreme joy or extreme hurt — we learn something about ourselves. I don’t know why. I only know that our gut instincts sometimes understand deep truths about ourselves that our rational brains haven’t yet figured out.

It started out as a satirical joke, but some friends liked the idea, so now it’s a real Facebook profile picture frame. If you’ve never heard of Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, let me explain. One of the dumber elements of social media is that it allows people to publicly signal their goodness and virtue to others — without actually doing anything of substance. So you see photo frames around profile photos saying things such as, “Moms Against Racism,” as though they’re standing up against those evil moms who are in favor of racism. It’s meaningless virtue-signaling and it deserves to be mocked, so I made a frame and published it on Facebook’s frame system today. If you go to your own Facebook profile picture and add a frame, then search for Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, you can select it. About a dozen of my friends are using it so far. It’s just fun satire — at least until Facebook decides it “goes against our community standards.” Or something. It’s just a fun way of mocking something that deserves to be mocked.

When I first told you about the project that would become DavidMcElroy.TV, I thought it would launch by mid-May. Since today is the last day of May — and I’m still not close to launching a finished product — here’s a brief update. The graphic above is the latest rough mockup of the format, but it’s still subject to change. Even the logo isn’t yet set in stone. Motion graphics are really difficult when you’re starting from scratch. Sunday night, my camera stopped recording, so it has to be sent off for repair. I have an older camera that I’ll keep using for testing, but I can’t launch without the better one. The audio system developed a low buzz this weekend that has me puzzled. I’ll be taking all the equipment over to the home of a local audio engineer who’s volunteered to help me figure out what I’ve done wrong. On top of all that, my on-camera performance seems to get worse with each test I do. There are days when I think I’m crazy to be attempting this. And in truth, I probably am insane to do it, but being crazy has never stopped me before. I’m at least a month away from launch and it could be a few months. Thanks for being patient — and thanks for all the support and enthusiasm for the project that you’ve sent my way.

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

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