Wow.
Kerry Max Cook
Kerry Max Cook is innocent of the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found, citing stunning allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that led to Cook spending 20 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Cook was released from prison in 1997 and Smith County prosecutors set aside his conviction in 2016. The ruling Wednesday, by the state’s highest criminal court, formally exonerates him.
“This case is riddled with allegations of State misconduct that warrant setting aside Applicant’s conviction,” Judge Bert Richardson wrote in the majority opinion. “And when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all — uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury and new scientific evidence.”
[…]
The Court of Criminal Appeals opinion Wednesday noted numerous instances of wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. During the 1978 trial, the prosecution illegally withheld favorable evidence from Cook’s defense team and much of the evidence they did present was revealed to be false.
One of the prosecution’s witnesses was a jailhouse snitch who met Cook at the Smith County jail and said Cook confessed to the murder. The witness later recanted his testimony as false, stating: “I lied on him to save myself.”
The prosecution also withheld that in exchange for that damning testimony, they had agreed to lower that witness’s first-degree murder charge to voluntary manslaughter.
I didn’t follow the Cook saga, mentioning this case once in passing when discussing the more-complex case of Darlie Routier. There’s plenty more info about this case out there if you want to read some more. I’ll just add two things. One is that after all this time, the real killer not only got away with it, but was never even a suspect because of the Smith County prosecutor’s relentless focus on railroading Cook. And two, in the same way that qualified immunity protects cops who do bad things, it also protects rogue DAs who care way more about their conviction percentage than they do about protecting the public and serving justice. One wonders how many fewer cases like this would exist if prosecutors had to face the consequences of their reckless actions.