Kerry Max Cook (born 1956) is an American former death row inmate who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards in 1977.[1]
Critical role to play in delivering this outcome. 1 Investing in the Early Years - a National Early Childhood Development Strategy, Council of Australian Governments 2 On 5 December 2008, State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers of Education meeting as the Ministerial Council on. Created by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (The Exonerated) and directed by Blank, the play, shot using a cast of seven filmed in their homes, is derived from interviews conducted with EMTs, nurses. State Killing, the Stage of Innocence, and The Exonerated.
Biography[edit]
Kerry Max Cook was born in Stuttgart, West Germany, and moved to Texas with his family in 1972. He served over 20 years in a Texas prison on Death Row. Since his release, he has become an activist against the death penalty, speaking across the United States and in Europe.
Cook wrote Chasing Justice, which was published by HarperCollins in 2008, that details his conviction, the widespread prosecutorial abuses which led to it, and the battle to prove his innocence. Chasing Justice was nominated for the Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America. He was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to write the book. In an advance blurb for the memoir, former FBI Director and Federal Judge William S. Sessions noted, 'Kerry Max Cook has written a brutal but compelling account of his 22 years on Texas’s death row for a murder he did not commit. The book depicts his struggles against all odds to free himself from an inept justice system that would not let go, despite mounting and eventually overwhelming evidence of his innocence. What is perhaps most amazing is the grace with which he now lives his life as a free man, determined to prevent others from suffering the horrors he endured.'
Cook is one of six people whose stories were dramatized in the play The Exonerated by Eric Jensen and Jessica Blank. This details how each individual was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, in addition to their exoneration after varying years of imprisonment. Cook often personally participates in the play. The Exonerated has been made into a film, which first aired on the CourtTV cable television station on January 27, 2005. Kerry Cook is portrayed by Aidan Quinn in the film. At the end the film fades from the actor to Cook himself who talks about his experience, his family and his book writing.
Although he is out of prison, Cook still lives in a perpetually liminal state. Although he has never admitted guilt, he is still considered a convicted murderer in the eyes of Texas law, which adversely affects his daily life.
Cook and his lawyer Marc McPeak have embarked on a new legal endeavor to clear his name: a motion to perform DNA tests on physical evidence found at the murder scene. McPeak also filed a motion to recuse Judge Jack Skeen, the former district attorney who prosecuted Cook's first two trials, as Skeen would be the one to hear the DNA-testing motion.[2] On April 9, 2012, Administrative Judge John Ovard of Dallas granted Cook's request for DNA testing but denied his plea to move the case out of Smith County, where prosecutors who originally tried his case were found by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to have committed 'egregious prosecutorial misconduct.'[3][4] Cook's battle to clear his name has been taken up by the online petition site Change.org.
On June 6, 2016, prosecutors agreed to drop the charges against Kerry Max Cook; this was motivated in part by James Mayfield's admission that he had lied about not having sex with the victim for weeks.[5]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
The Exonerated Play Pdf Online Book
- The Wrong Men by Stanley Cohen (2003)
The Exonerated Play Pdf
The Innocence Project represents clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence. We also consult on a number of cases on appeal in which the defendant is represented by primary counsel and we provide information and background on DNA testing litigation. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row.
These people served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration and release.
The Exonerated Play Pdf Online
The Innocence Project’s full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases. Our intake and evaluation staff conduct extensive research into each case to determine whether DNA testing could be conducted to prove innocence. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.