I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about this explicitly in a single post, though I’ve been aware of it even before Radley Balko of The Agitator blog (now Washington Post) wrote this in 2006: They Always Shoot the Dog.

Apparently, people who think that perhaps the government acted properly in invading and burning down a house of largely innocent (but admidetly weird) people get really pissed off when they learn that the federal government also slaughtered the Branch Davidian dogs. Women and children? Meh. Weirdo cultists probably deserved it. But…

“They killed the dogs? Aw, man. That’s bullshit.”

Radly was a sort of blogger-investigative journalist—whose main credit is getting Cory Maye first, off death row, then released. It was all over an absolutely righteous—stand up and say yea—killing of an intruder in a uniform, who if I recall correctly, was the son of the police chief or some other person of law doesn’t apply privilege. He was afraid for a baby daughter, not a dog, so take it with a grain of salt. After all, there’s Original Sin to consider and I believe that pets are innocent at birth, unlike human infants.

Cory Jermaine Maye (born September 9, 1980), is a former prisoner in the U.S. state of Mississippi. He was originally convicted of murder in the 2001 death of a Prentiss, Mississippi police officer named, Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid on the other half of Maye’s duplex. Maye has said he thought that the intruders were burglars and did not realize they were police. He pleaded not guilty at his trial, citing self-defense. Nevertheless, Maye was convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. Maye’s case attracted little attention until late 2005, when Reason magazine senior editor and police misconduct researcher Radley Balko brought it to light on his blog The Agitator.^[1] Balko’s research raised several questions about Maye’s conviction and in particular about the reliability of medical examiner Steven Hayne, who performed the autopsy on Jones and testified at the trial. According to Maye’s supporters, his conviction also brought up issues such as the right to self-defense, police conduct in the War on Drugs, racial and social inequities in Mississippi and whether he received competent legal representation.

In case you think I just pulled this out of my ass, search the blog for ‘Cory Maye’. I was there the whole time.