Justice reclaimed

After decades on death row, Kerry Cook had to learn how to live again.


By Patrick Beach
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, February 18, 2007
PLANO — Beginning in the summer of 1977, when Linda Jo Edwards was found raped, murdered and mutilated in her Tyler apartment, Smith County fought hard to kill Kerry Max Cookfor the deed.
Tried, convicted, sentenced to die and sent to the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Cook was raped shortly after his arrival and made a sexual slave, a commodity to be traded like cigarettes in the death house economy. Over more than two decades he endured three trials, appeals that raised his hopes and dashed them again, brutal assaults and suicide attempts, the last of which, in August 1991, included nearly severing his penis. He dipped a finger in his own blood to scrawl a final message on the wall of his cell:"I was an innocent man." The organ was reattached and Cook recovered.

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Leave it to Texas....no doubt a fair number of people still believe he is guilty because of the plea agreement which got him out of prison. But that agreement was only placed on the table by prosecutors who knew they had a defendant who would no back down and that they were about to get their noses rubbed in it. It was a face-saving gesture, nothing more.

Although Mr. Cook made his way off Death Row and out of prison, I presume he is still dealing with the joys of being a convicted felon.