Hanners: Long overdue justice for Kerry Max Cook

Published 4:30 am Wednesday, October 9, 2024

In a speech at the National Cathedral just five days before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” When I started investigating Kerry Max Cook’s case for The Dallas Morning News in December 1987, that quote stuck in my mind.

Cook had already been on death row for nearly a decade. He was convicted and sentenced to die for the gruesome slaying of Linda Jo Edwards, of Tyler. Cook had always maintained his innocence. Few believed him.

But as I started investigating his case, I saw problem after problem. Smith County already had a reputation for playing fast and loose with justice, and Cook’s case exhibited many of the issues that had arisen in other cases. Alternate suspects — including one who had actually threatened to kill Edwards — were never investigated with any vigor. A key prosecution witness had recanted his testimony. Other witnesses told me their testimony had been twisted or was incomplete. A police officer misled the jury about key evidence. Prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. The bottom line: authorities had abused the public’s trust in the criminal justice system.

I wound up writing 40-plus investigative articles about Cook’s case. The next few years were filled with reversals, retrials, re-convictions and more reversals until 1998, when prosecutors offered Cook a deal: if he pleaded no-contest, he’d get credit for time served and be released.

It is easy for those of us with comfortable lives to say, “Hey, that’s a lousy deal because it leaves you with a murder conviction.” But we haven’t spent time in the hell that is Texas Death Row. If you’re given a chance to get out alive you take it.

Cook took the deal. A lot of ex-death row inmates exit prison and then fade into the background of life. But Cook set out to do what was next to impossible: persuade the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to declare him “Actually Innocent.” A lower court had set aside Cook’s conviction, but had declined to recommend that the Court of Criminal Appeals find Cook Actually Innocent.

In June of this year, after a lengthy and exhaustive review, the TCCA declared Cook Actually Innocent. He was exonerated. The Court’s opinion is damning, documenting decades of official misconduct aimed at trampling justice.

Even after the TCCA issued its mandate finalizing their finding of Actual Innocence, prosecutors didn’t dismiss the indictment against Cook, seeking a rehearing before the TCCA. That request was rejected.

But on Oct. 2, the county quietly filed a petition asking a judge to dismiss the indictment. A judge signed it. A miscarriage of justice that had gone on for more than 47 years — was finally over. For the first time since Aug. 5, 1977, Cook could go to sleep that night without a capital murder charge or conviction hanging over his head.

Of course that means Edwards’ murder is now officially unsolved. The chances of solving it have evaporated. Witnesses have died. Potential suspects have died. Evidence has disappeared or been destroyed. Had authorities done an earnest clean-slate investigation when my articles first appeared in 1988, years of injustice could have been avoided. Instead, they chose to continue trying to railroad a man the TCCA would declare had Actual Innocence.

Edwards deserved better. Her family deserves better.

But at least Cook — who once came within 11 days of being executed — can rest knowing he is living proof the arc of the moral universe is long but does, indeed, bend towards justice.