CORY MAYE UPDATE: Radley Balko has been pursuing this story indefatigably, and he’s now identified the informant whose call led to the wrong-house no-knock raid:

After the guy realized the investigator was working for the defense team, he clammed up. When Bob Evans — Cory Maye’s lead attorney — called to tell him that if he didn’t talk, they’d compell his testimony with a subpeona, the informant flipped out. He called Evans, and left a rant on Evans’ answering machine that, when Evans played it for me the other night, blew my mind. It’s a 45-second clip of absolute fury, brimming with f-bombs, anger, hate, and — by my count — at least four utterances of the word “nigger.”

This is the “trustworthy” informant whose tip led to the raid on Cory Maye’s home. An unabashed bigot. Makes you wonder how many other black people have been raided, arrested, and imprisoned based on this guy’s tips.

Jeez. You have to have informants for some law enforcement tasks, of course, but the peculiar dynamics of the Drug War lead to much more reliance on these usually unsavory types, and drastically higher risks of tragic outcomes when, as here, they’re paired with no-knock raids on what turns out to be the wrong house.

Another reason, among many, for getting rid of the Drug War, of course.