Whipped Cream Difficulties

I went around and around about posting this, because I was worried about spoiling the broth boring my readers. But I think this is worth noting.

Over the weekend, David Hanners, the Dallas Morning News reporter who did the early coverage of the Cook case, posted a long comment in response to Michael Hall’s post, “What the ‘Tyler Morning Telegraph’ Failed to Tell You about Kerry Max Cook”.  The Texas Monthly blog promoted that comment to a full post (in the process cleaning up the formatting so it is more readable): that post is here.

Summarizing, Hanners also has issues with the daily paper’s coverage of the case, and doesn’t believe Cook is guilty.

I am probably one of the few people who has gone into Mr. Cook’s case with objective eyes. When I began looking into it, I wasn’t out to prove him guilty or innocent; frankly, I didn’t care. My reason for looking into his case was to try and answer a very simple question involving the administration of justice: Why did it take the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nearly eight years to rule in his initial appeal?

Hanners also mentions a couple of things about the police investigation that I didn’t know, and are frankly shocking. The police apparently did not interview the victim’s co-workers until they complained, then “the detectives went out to the school and basically waited for people to come to them—in full view of Mr. Mayfield. [the other suspect in the case -DB]”

Then there’s the missing stocking. Police initially found just one sock at the crime scene. The prosecution claimed that the killer mutilated Linda Edwards body, and took body parts away from the crime scene in one of her stockings. Apparently, there were no body parts taken…

When the jurors in the first retrial had the trial exhibits back in the jury room, they opened the sealed evidence bag containing Ms. Edwards’ jeans, pulled them out and held them up. The “missing” stocking dropped out. The cops couldn’t even find a stocking in a pant leg.

And, now that there’s DNA pointing to someone else…

I clearly remember David Dobbs, the prosecutor handling the retrials, telling me prior to the testing that they were excited about the prospects of a test because the semen sample “could only have been left by the killer.” Those were his exact words to me, and I remember him saying it as if it were yesterday. So then the sample is sent away for testing, the deal with Mr. Cook is offered and accepted—and then the results come back showing the semen belonged to someone other than Mr. Cook. Suddenly, the prosecution’s story changes. Now they say, “Well, of course it was somebody else. But Mr. Cook is still the killer.”

Over at the Texas Monthly web site, Michael Hall has an interesting blog post about the case of Kerry Max Cook.

To be honest, I’d heard the name, I’d seen some of the press coverage, but I never quite had a handle on what happened with this case. Hall’s post is a pretty good introduction.

In brief, Cook was charged with the 1977 murder of Linda Edwards. He was convicted at his first trial in 1978: ten years later, the Dallas Morning News exposed various issues from the first trial (a lying jailhouse snitch, a detective who claimed he could tell how old fingerprints were). Cook was granted a retrial in 1991.

The second trial ended in a hung jury. During that trial, even more evidence of prosecutorial misconduct came out in court. Cook was tried a third time in 1994, and was found guilty (again) and sentenced to death (again).

That third conviction was reversed in 1996 by the Court of Criminal Appeals, which specifically called out the misconduct on the part of the prosecution and police.

Cook, for various reasons, ended up entering a no-contest plea “in which Cook would maintain his innocence while only acknowledging the evidence the state would offer to try and convict him” before the fourth trial. DNA testing (the results of which became available only after Cook’s plea) seems to point to another man as the actual culprit. Cook is attempting to get additional DNA testing done, and to get a declaration of actual innocence from the Texas courts.

The entire case is much more complex than I’ve outlined here; I commend Hall’s post to your attention.

(Hattip: GFB.)