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.)