On June 20, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals exonerated Kerry Max Cook of the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards, citing shocking claims of prosecutorial misconduct that led to Cook’s 20-year sentence on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Cook was freed from jail in 1997, and Smith County prosecutors overturned his conviction in 2016.
Cook, now 68, became an opponent of the death punishment after his release.
He was charged with the 1977 rape, murder, and mutilation of 21-year-old Edwards. His first conviction, from 1978, was reversed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Cook’s conviction and death sentence, but in 1988, with 11 days until his execution, the United States Supreme Court asked the Texas court to revisit the case. A second trial in 1992 ended in a mistrial, while a third in 1994 resulted in a new conviction and death sentence.
In 1996, the Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the second verdict, claiming that wrongdoing by police and prosecutors had tainted the case from the beginning.
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Three years later, the court granted Mr. Cook a second trial. In 1994, after a mistrial, Cook was convicted and condemned to death for the second time.
In 1999, the Smith County district attorney planned to trial Cook a fourth time, but instead reached a plea agreement in which Cook was released from prison but his conviction was maintained. Until Wednesday, the Texas legal system had labeled him as a murderer.
The Court of Criminal Appeals judgment issued Wednesday cited multiple instances of misbehavior by police and prosecutors. During the 1978 trial, the prosecution illegally concealed favorable information from Cook’s defense team, and much of the evidence presented was found to be fraudulent.
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As per legal.economictimes,The first conviction, in 1978, was based primarily on the testimony of a jailhouse informant who said Cook had confessed. The witness then recanted his evidence as untrue, saying, “I lied on him to save myself.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Cook, 22 years after his release, the State of Texas has not exonerated him. Despite being widely regarded as one of the country’s most famous exonerated inmates, Mr. Cook was not officially exonerated until Wednesday’s court ruling.