Results 1 to 10 of 10

Thread: Kerry Max Cook - Texas

  1. #1
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    1,515

    Kerry Max Cook - Texas




    Kerry Max Cook Seeks Hearing on Murder Evidence

    Former death row inmate and author Kerry Max Cook, whose lawyers are working to officially exonerate him in a 1977 rape and murder, is asking a judge to conduct a hearing to determine what evidence is still available for DNA testing to finally establish his legal innocence.

    The request comes after Cook discovered that much of the physical evidence in his case was destroyed and that someone in Smith County law enforcement — there's a dispute over whether it was a former prosecutor or an investigator — kept the murder weapon and samples of Cook's hair as a "souvenir" from the brutal murder of Linda Jo Edwards.

    "Serious questions have been raised as a result that must be answered as a part of the DNA Motion," Cook's lawyers wrote in a motion filed Tuesday.

    Cook was sentenced to death in 1978 for Edwards' murder after prosecutors convinced the jury that he bludgeoned and stabbed her to death. He professed his innocence, and the guilty verdict was ultimately overturned. A second trial ended in a mistrial, and he was again found guilty and sentenced to death in a third trial. An appeals court overturned that decision, finding “egregious prosecutorial misconduct” in the case. When Smith County offered Cook a plea deal in 1999 before what was to be his fourth trial, he agreed. He refused to admit guilt but pleaded no contest and was set free. He is considered a killer in the eyes of the law despite subsequent DNA testing that in 1999 revealed that another man's semen was on Edwards' underwear.

    Now, Cook is seeking additional DNA testing to legally clear his name, but he argues he doesn't stand a fighting chance if his case remains in Smith County, where the courts have found that prosecutors committed misconduct in the past.

    Earlier this week, Cook alleged in a motion filed with the court that former prosecutor A.D. Clark III had kept the blood-soaked knife used to murder Edwards and a sample of Cook's hair. According to the motion, Smith County Assistant District Attorney Mike West said during a phone conversation with Cook's lawyers and with Administrative Judge John Ovard that Clark kept the items as "souvenirs."

    Clark, however, denied those claims "in every respect."

    West told the Associated Press that the former prosecutor had nothing to do with the "souvenirs." He said it was Eddie Clark, a Tyler police sergeant, who took the items from the evidence room.

    “They’ve just totally misrepresented that in the motion," West told the AP, adding that no charges were expected against the officer.

    But Marc McPeak, Cook's lawyer, has said that during the phone conversation with Ovard, West had several opportunities to clarify the "Clark" to whom he referred.

    "Even if I heard him wrong, he had every opportunity to correct me," McPeak said.

    Judge Ovard did not immediately respond to a message from the Tribune requesting comment, and Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

    In the motion filed Tuesday, Cook's lawyers wrote that a hearing is needed to answer dozens of questions about what has happened to DNA evidence in the case. In a list of existing and destroyed evidence created by Smith County, prosecutors reported destroying much of the evidence that might have contained biological material, including Edwards’ bra, panties and jeans, and all the latent fingerprints found at the scene.

    The destruction came just months after lawmakers passed a 2001 law that allowed for post-conviction DNA testing and required prosecutors to notify defendants before destroying evidence that might contain biological material. Cook's lawyers say the destruction was illegal because the defense was never notified.

    And given previous findings of prosecutorial misconduct in the case, in the motion filed Tuesday, Cook's lawyers also argue that further investigation is needed into the state of the evidence.

    "The Smith County District Attorney and Tyler Police Department 'say' that a significant amount of evidence has been destroyed. Of course, over the history of this case, the district attorney and police have said many things that were later shown to be false," Cook's lawyers wrote.

    In a separate filing, Cook's lawyers also urged Smith County Judge Christi Kennedy to follow the example of the Williamson County judge who recused himself in the case of Michael Morton.

    Morton was exonerated last year after DNA evidence showed he did not murder his wife in 1986. He served nearly 25 years of a life sentence in prison before his October release.

    In that case, Williamson County Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield recused himself. His decision would require him to make a judgment about the conduct of his longtime colleague, Williamson County Judge Ken Anderson, the prosecutor who secured Morton's conviction.

    Similarly, Cook's lawyers argue, Kennedy would have to judge the work of her colleague, Smith County Judge Jack Skeen, who was the prosecutor during Cook's second, third and fourth trials.

    "Just as Judge Stubblefield felt it was inappropriate to preside over a case where alleged misconduct by one of his colleagues on the Williamson County bench was at issue, it is equally inappropriate for Judge Kennedy to do so," they wrote.

    Bingham, the current district attorney, argued in an April 9 hearing that Cook is guilty and that current court personnel have no connection to previous alleged wrongdoing.

    Source
    No murder can be so cruel that there are not still useful imbeciles who do gloss over the murderer and apologize.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Kerry Max Cook's Exoneration Fight Gets Personal

    Kerry Max Cook, who spent two decades on death row for a 1977 murder, says Smith County prosecutors are fighting dirty in their mission to stymie his efforts to prove his innocence.

    In a motion filed Wednesday in Smith County state district court, Cook argues that prosecutors have resorted to lies and fabrications to prevent DNA testing on evidence he hopes will prove, more than 35 years after the crime, that he did not kill Linda Jo Edwards.

    "Our motion to strike contains an absolutely irrefutable record of deliberate egregious misrepresentations by" prosecutors, Cook said in a prepared statement.

    Cook, 56, was convicted in 1978 of the rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler. His first conviction was overturned, a second trial ended in a hung jury and a third ended with a conviction that was reversed after a court found it was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Before Smith County attempted to try Cook a fourth time, he agreed to a plea deal in 1999. Pleading no contest, he was set free. Subsequent testing revealed another man’s DNA on the victim’s clothes.

    After Cook's lawyers requested additional DNA testing on evidence in the case, they discovered some evidence had been destroyed and the storage of other evidence had presented questions regarding its chain of custody.

    The lawyers have asked for a hearing to decide whether the evidence has been so tainted that accurate DNA testing could be impossible. Smith County prosecutors argue the request for a hearing is an effort by Cook to delay the testing because they allege he is worried the testing will confirm his guilt. In their motion to strike the prosecutor’s motion opposing the hearing, Cook’s lawyers say the document is full of misrepresentations and should be stricken from the case record.

    In a motion filed in December, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham argued that Cook “has already accepted responsibility for this horrendous crime under oath” and that he “wishes to collect the million plus dollars he would be entitled to if he can somehow slither his way into an exoneration.” Bingham also said that another witness in the case admitted to committing the crime with Cook. In the motion, the prosecutor also objects to Cook’s claims that he was convicted based on “perjured testimony, suppression of exculpatory evidence and a virtual horror show of prosecutorial misconduct.”

    But Cook did not admit that he killed Edwards. In agreeing to plead no contest, he maintained his innocence in documents filed with the court. Cook's lawyers said there is also no record of trial testimony from another witness admitting he and Cook murdered Edwards. And the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in 1996 that the Smith County prosecutors committed “numerous undisputed acts of misconduct” during the trial that initially sent Cook to death row.

    “They’re not just opposing Kerry’s bid to exonerate himself, but they’re saying all kinds of things about evidence at the trials that just isn’t true,” said Nina Morrison, staff attorney at the New York-based Innocence Project.

    Morrison, one of the attorneys working on Cook’s case, was also instrumental in the 2011 exoneration of Michael Morton, who was convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife. The Williamson County prosecutor who saw to Morton’s conviction and nearly 25 years of wrongful imprisonment now faces a court of inquiry and state bar lawsuit over, among other things, allegations that he lied to the court during the trial.

    “You would think that after the Morton case, prosecutors would be more careful about what they say about defendants in DNA cases,” Morrison said.

    But finding and ensuring the integrity of DNA evidence from a crime three decades old has proven a challenge. Cook’s lawyers discovered that the lead investigator in the case kept the blood-soaked murder weapon in his attic for the last decade as a “souvenir” of one of Tyler’s most infamous and brutal killings, along with a slide containing a sample of Cook’s hair.

    They also learned that in December 2001, Smith County prosecutors destroyed much of the key physical evidence in the murder case without notifying Cook’s lawyers. Among the items destroyed were Edwards’ bra, panties and jeans, a hair found on her buttocks and all the latent fingerprints found at the scene. The destruction came just months after lawmakers passed the 2001 law that allowed for post-conviction DNA testing and required prosecutors to notify defendants before destroying evidence that might contain biological material.

    Bingham did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

    Paul Nugent represented Cook during his appeals from death row from 1991 until 1999, when he pleaded no contest and was released from prison. Nugent said Cook has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested in 1977.

    “A courtroom is a temple and a temple for the truth,” Nugent said. “It’s about justice; it’s not a game.”

    http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/...gets-personal/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014

    Years after being freed from death row, East Texas man fights to clear name

    Kerry Max Cook’s saga, the most high-profile case in small Smith County’s history, resulted in three lengthy trials and movies and books, including his Chasing Justice

    AUSTIN — Nearly 40 years after Linda Jo Edwards was murdered and mutilated in her Tyler apartment, the man convicted of the crime — and almost executed for it — wants to be exonerated, based on new DNA tests.

    Lawyers for Kerry Max Cook, who Smith County prosecutors contend killed Edwards in a perverse rage in June 1977, filed documents Monday urging the court to declare the former death row inmate innocent. They argue that six rounds of extensive DNA testing from 1999 through 2015 failed to identify any evidence that Cook was at the scene of the crime.

    Instead, the tests confirmed the presence of semen from Edwards’ former lover, a longtime suspect in the case and a dean at the local university whose extramarital affair with the young woman had ended badly, the lawyers say.

    In a separate motion filed Monday, the lawyers also asked Smith County state district Judge Christi Kennedy to recuse herself from overseeing the case. They allege that Kennedy is too closely tied to prosecutors the courts have said engaged in misconduct to win Cook’s conviction, including suppressing evidence and securing false testimony.

    The saga has been the most high-profile case in small Smith County’s history. It’s resulted in three lengthy trials, books and movies, and worldwide attention.

    Cook and his lawyers, including Barry Scheck from the New York-based Innocence Project, declined to comment, referring to the legal documents filed in court.

    Mike West, an assistant Smith County district attorney, said he hadn’t had time Monday afternoon to review the latest filings in the decades-old case.

    “We’re going to look at it and give it a serious look,” West said.

    Cook was convicted in 1978 of stabbing and beating Edwards to death in a sexual frenzy, and he was sentenced to die. He maintained that he was innocent, and the guilty verdict was overturned. A second trial produced a mistrial, and a third trial sent Cook back to death row.

    An appeals court threw out that verdict, too, finding prosecutors had engaged in “pervasive” and “egregious” misconduct. In 1999, just days before what would have been Cook’s fourth trial, Smith County prosecutors offered him a no-contest plea deal that allowed him to be released from prison. Cook didn’t admit the crime but remained guilty in the eyes of the law.

    Cook has been out of prison since then. He’s married and has a young son, and they’ve traveled the world to tell his story. But the conviction hangs over Cook, preventing him from voting and making it difficult to find work. He’s hoping the new evidence will finally clear his name.

    Before Cook accepted the 1999 plea deal, prosecutors had sought DNA testing on semen found in Edwards’ underwear. Cook took the deal before the results came back, but the report eventually showed that the semen belonged to James Mayfield, Edwards’ boss and former lover.

    Mayfield has never been charged in relation to the crime, and prosecutors have said the DNA testing doesn’t mean Cook is innocent. Efforts to reach Mayfield and his former lawyer for this report were unsuccessful. In the past, he has denied any role in the crime.

    In 2012, Cook asked for a new round of more advanced DNA testing on the underwear and other evidence at the crime scene, including the murder weapon and a hair found on Edwards’ body.

    Lawyers discovered, though, that an investigator in the case had taken the knife used in the murder home for “field testing.” They also learned that the state destroyed the hair just after lawmakers, in 2001, approved a statute that allowed inmates access to DNA evidence in their case files that might help prove their innocence.

    The knife, the underwear and dozens of other items collected from the crime scene were tested. None of the testing matched Cook’s DNA, according to lawyers. The only match, they said, was an even more conclusive finding that the skin and sperm cells in Edwards’ panties belonged to Mayfield.

    “The DNA profile shared by Mayfield and the male donor on the samples tested by Cellmark, respectively, are shared by just 1 in 3.112 trillion and 1 in 10.07 billion unrelated Caucasians — i.e., fewer than one such individual out of the entire current population of the Earth,” the lawyers wrote.

    In the filings, Cook’s lawyers allege that Smith County prosecutors failed to fully investigate Mayfield despite knowing that he had a relationship with Edwards and that he matched a witness description of the perpetrator at the scene and despite reports from friends who said the man had a violent temper.

    Mayfield testified at trial that he was with his family the night of the murder, and he said he hadn’t had sex with Edwards for weeks before she was killed.

    With the newly obtained evidence, Cook’s lawyers argue, a jury would never convict him of Edwards’ murder, and they want the court to declare him innocent.

    But to give Cook a fair shot at finally vindicating his name, the lawyers say a judge from outside of small, interconnected Smith County must oversee the proceedings.

    Kennedy has close relationships with prosecutors and others who helped secure Cook’s conviction, they argue. While she did not work on the case herself before she took the bench, Kennedy’s clients included Smith County law enforcement officers involved in Cook’s case, and her late husband worked in the district attorney’s office during two of Cook’s trials.

    Additionally, they contend, she’s close to other judges and lawyers who have been involved in the long-running case.

    Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment Monday. She has three days to decide whether to recuse herself in the case.


    Timeline: The Kerry Max Cook case

    June 1977: Linda Jo Edwards is mutilated and murdered in her Tyler apartment.

    August 1977: Kerry Max Cook is arrested and charged with the crime. He was staying with a friend in Edwards’ apartment complex.

    July 1978: Cook’s first trial takes place in Tyler. He’s convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

    December 1987: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds the conviction and sentence.

    June 1988: The U.S. Supreme Court orders the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review the case, just 11 days before Cook’s scheduled execution.

    January 1990: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds the conviction.

    September 1991: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reverses itself, vacating Cook’s conviction and ordering a new trial.

    December 1992: Cook is tried again, this time in Williamson County. A mistrial is declared after the jury comes back deadlocked.

    January-March 1994: In a third trial, Cook is again found guilty and sentenced to death.

    November 1996: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturns the conviction and death sentence, ruling that due process had been violated because “prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this entire matter from the outset.”

    October 1997: The Supreme Court refuses to overturn the appeals court ruling. Smith County prosecutors seek a fourth trial.

    November 1997: Cook is released on bond awaiting another trial.

    February 1999: Shortly before the trial is set to begin in Bastrop, Cook pleads no contest with the promise of avoiding any more prison time. He is released from prison. Cook maintains his innocence.

    April 1999: The Texs Department of Public Safety issues a DNA testing report showing a partial DNA match to James Mayfield, who is described in court documents as Edwards’ “married, jealous ex-lover.” The report finds no trace of Cook’s DNA.

    April 2001: The Legislature enacts a measure to allow convicts to test DNA in the state’s possession in efforts to exonerate themselves. The statute also bars the state from altering or destroying evidence that could be tested for DNA.

    December 2001: Smith County authorizes the destruction of some evidence in Cook’s case.

    February 2012: Cook files a motion for post-conviction DNA testing, seeking exoneration.

    April 2013-March 2015: Five separate DNA reports yield no DNA that matches Cook’s. The tests further confirm the presence of DNA from Mayfield, lawyers say.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime...clear-name.ece

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    FRANCE
    Posts
    3,073
    Kerry Max Cook hearing set to begin Monday

    Kerry Max Cook could testify under oath for the first time on Monday as he seeks to be declared innocent of the 1977 sexual assault, murder and mutilation that sent him to death row - twice.

    Cook, who spent nearly 20 years in prison, hopes to show that the evidence in the case points not to him, but to another man.

    The hearing, which is expected to last for several days, is slated to begin Monday in the 114th District Court, with visiting Judge Jack Carter, of Texarkana, presiding.

    As Cook's lawyers contend in a filing, he "is factually innocent of the charge that he raped and murdered Linda Jo Edwards ... Mr. Cook’s case is one of the most notorious capital prosecutions in United States history - both for the brutality he endured while spending more than twenty years on death row as a result of his wrongful convictions, and for the judicially-substantiated pattern of state misconduct that repeatedly prevented him from establishing his factual innocence at trial."

    The body of Edwards, 21, was found on the morning of June 10, 1977, in her apartment on Old Bullard Road. She had been beaten in the head with a plaster statue, stabbed in the throat, chest and back more than 25 times and sexually mutilated.

    Cook was implicated in the crime after his fingerprint was found on Edwards' patio door, but he maintains another man was responsible for the crime - former college dean James Mayfield, with whom Edwards was having an affair.

    In his 1978 trial, Cook invoked the Fifth Amendment and did not testify. He did so again in a 1992 retrial, a 1994 retrial and in a 1999 grand jury investigation. However, because he is now the one bringing the legal action in an effort to prove his innocence, the burden of proof is on him and he is therefore likely to testify.

    Cook, who met Edwards at the apartment complex where they both lived, has always denied he was the killer.

    He was tried for the crime in 1978, convicted and sentenced to die by a Smith County jury. But the Criminal Court of Appeals overturned the case in 1989 because a psychologist had not read Cook his Miranda warning, thus rendering all information in the psychological interview useless.

    Cook was not freed at the time because he remained under indictment of capital murder, and then-Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen Jr. took two more tries at convicting Cook.

    In 1992, Smith County tried the case, but the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.

    In 1994, Cook was found guilty of capital murder when the state used the testimony of a witness who had died.

    The man, who lived in the same apartment complex as Edwards, said he had an encounter with Cook the night of the murder, according to court documents.

    However, the defense was not privy to statements the man made that might perjure him, and in 1997 the case was reversed by the Court of Criminal Appeals because the defense team could not cross examine the man about his testimony and impeach him based on the evidence that was originally suppressed from the defense.

    In 1998, as Smith County was moving forward with a fourth trial, Skeen offered Cook a deal that would convict him of murder but would not require him to admit he killed the woman.

    In exchange for his plea of no contest, Cook was convicted of murder but sentenced to the time he already served.

    He was released from prison and has been challenging the ruling ever since, hoping DNA evidence would clear him of the crime.

    Smith County’s current district attorney, Matt Bingham, said he is eager to cross-examine Cook.

    “Kerry Max Cook has never taken the stand, raised his right hand and answered any questions, except for a bond reduction hearing on Sept. 20, 1977, where the questions were limited only to his ability to make bond,” Bingham said last week. “So he’s never answered anything about the murder.”

    However, Cook has written a book about his trials and time in prison, and is active on social media.

    Cook’s attorneys with the Innocence Project of Texas were not available for comment late last week.

    http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-News+Lo...-begin-monday#

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    Man Once on Death Row Exonerated in East Texas Slaying

    A judge has dismissed murder charges against a man who previously was convicted and almost executed in the 1977 East Texas slaying of a 21-year-old woman.

    The court Monday approved an agreement between prosecutors and attorneys for Kerry Max Cook to dismiss the charges. The order said Cook's rights were violated, in part by false testimony during his trial.

    Attorneys representing Cook had argued that six rounds of DNA testing failed to identify any evidence proving he was at the scene of the crime.

    In 1978, Cook was convicted in the slaying of Linda Jo Edwards in her Tyler apartment and was sentenced to death. Cook maintained his innocence and the verdict was overturned, but legal wranglings continued for decades.

    Cook has been free since 1999 and living in New Jersey.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/m...aying-39645415
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #6
    Senior Member Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2015
    Posts
    101
    Former death row inmate offers different view of Kerry Max Cook

    A man who used to be on death row and who now lives in East Texas is offering a very different view of Kerry Max Cook. Mark Fields was sent to death row on a murder for hire in the Wichita Falls area after he was paid $400 by a police officer to kill the officer's wife.

    He reached out to KLTV after our reporting on Kerry Max Cook's hearings on May 31 and June 6, 2016, that resulted in Cook's conviction being set aside for the murder of Edwards. Fields said he had no knowledge of Cook's whereabouts before seeing the hearing on television coverage.

    During his time on Texas death row, he would hear inmate's stories and offer to help them with their appeals. He said in the late 1970's he heard from Kerry Max Cook who told specific details of a murder at a Tyler apartment complex in 1977.

    The body of Linda Jo Edwards was discovered brutally murdered at the Embarcadero Apartments in Tyler on June 10, 1977.

    DETAILS OF THE MURDER

    "Mr. Cook explained to me that he lived there in the same area that there was a fence or something he could climb up on and see inside Ms. Edwards apartment," Fields said. "Finally he would confront her and let her know he was receptive to their particular situation as he believed it to be. He went in her apartment, surprised her... believe he said he hit her trying to make her be quiet..."

    Fields said Cook told him he hit her with an object in the room. That matches evidence introduced at previous trials showing an object they believe was used to hit Edwards.

    "At that point, he told me, he ate parts of her body," Fields said. "He believed it was alright on the basis that he loved her so much he didn't intend to kill her but he wanted her to be a part of his life, so therefore he consumed parts of the body because then she would be forever a part of him."

    Parts of Edwards' body were never located by investigators.

    WHY NOW?

    Fields, who had his sentence changed to a life sentence and is now out on parole, said he is coming forward now, not for anything in return, but to inform the public about who he knows as the real Kerry Max Cook.

    "Who I'm trying to contact is the general public because they are in danger -- whatever happens in the future -- had I not come forward, had I not tried to warn the people and he did something of this nature again then I would feel responsible because I had information. Because I know him," Fields said. "I don't believe he's done. I do believe he's dangerous. I do believe if he obtains what he's seeking it will only motivate him to act in a way he's acted before."

    The Smith County District Attorney's Office said they had no knowledge of Fields until he showed up at the Smith County Courthouse after contacting KLTV. After a review of the dozens of boxes of case files, they discovered a letter from Fields he sent from prison in 1997 to the district attorney's office. The office then took no action on that letter.

    IS THE DEATH ROW STORY POSSIBLE?

    The Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed to KLTV Cook and Fields were on death row at the same time. They also said it is possible for inmates to share stories to each other.

    We spoke to Kerry Max Cook; he was initially scheduled to interview with us Friday but canceled the interview.

    He called Fields' version a "false confession story" and released the following statement:

    "I have proclaimed my absolute innocence since the day of my arrest.

    This has never changed.

    And it will not change now."

    Cook said they are in the process of assembling a new legal team since firing his Innocence Project team Thursday. A hearing on Cook's actual innocence is slated for June 29 in a Smith County courtroom before visiting judge Jack Carter of Texarkana.

    http://www.ksla.com/story/32196962/f...kerry-max-cook

  7. #7
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Kerry Max Cook fires his Innocence Project legal team, days after his murder conviction was set aside

    (TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH) - Just days after his conviction for a 1977 murder was thrown out by a visiting judge in Tyler - and days before his hearing seeking a finding of “actual innocence,” Kerry Max Cook has fired his legal team.

    Furious at lead attorney Gary Ushaden’s words of appreciation for Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham’s cooperation in reaching a surprise agreement setting aside Cook’s murder conviction, Cook went on Facebook to slam his lawyers. “Gary, I did not authorize you to make that platform speech praising Matt Bingham and the Smith County District Attorney’s Office in Tyler,” Cook wrote. “I told you the night before as the client no. I was humiliated by it.”

    Cook wrote that praising Bingham “publicly exonerates Matt Bingham, (former prosecutor) David Dobbs and (former district attorney, now judge) Jack Skeen.”

    “I could go in for pages and pages of everything done over my objections, but the point is, I no longer trust that you are not too tied in a too friendly relationship with Matt Bingham,” Cook wrote. “You have formed a relationship of trust because of so much time with him and you have allowed this to sympathize with his dilemma.” On Thursday, Cook posted the text of a letter he received from Nina Morrison, senior staff attorney with the Innocence Project of New York.

    “Unfortunately, it’s clear that Barry and I can’t continue on as your lawyers at this point, and neither can Gary or Bruce, given what you've said are the requirements on your end as the client going forward ( that meetings with Matt Bingham cease).

    “Gary Udashen is going to let the judge know today that you have asked us to withdraw as your counsel and we have agreed to do so,” she wrote to him. “He will tell the Judge that we will file a formal motion to withdraw on Monday.”

    She added, “We will do everything we can to assist with the transition, and we wish you all the best in your continued quest for exoneration.”

    Cook responded to her, also on Facebook.

    “There are no new lawyers. Stop saying that to make yourselves look like you just had a difficult client instead of a breach in trust, please,” he posted. “You are leaving me on the goal line because I stood up for what I felt was wrong and neither of you would listen to me as the client.”

    The body of Edwards, 21, was found on the morning of June 10, 1977, in her apartment on Old Bullard Road. She had been beaten in the head, stabbed in the throat, chest and back more than 25 times and sexually mutilated.

    Cook was implicated in the crime after his fingerprint was found on Edwards’ patio door, but he maintains another man was responsible for the crime - former college dean James Mayfield, with whom Edwards was having an affair. Cook was tried for the crime in 1978, convicted and sentenced to die by a Smith County jury. But the Criminal Court of Appeals overturned the case in 1989 because a psychologist had not read Cook his Miranda warning, thus rendering all information in the psychological interview useless.

    He was not freed at the time because he remained under indictment of capital murder, and then-Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen took two more tries at convicting Cook.

    In 1992, Smith County tried the case, but the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.

    In 1994, Cook was found guilty of capital murder, but prosecutors used the testimony of a witness who had died. That was reversed by the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1997.

    In 1998, as Smith County was moving forward with a fourth trial, Skeen offered Cook a deal that would convict him of murder but would not require him to admit he killed the woman.

    In exchange for his plea of no contest, Cook was convicted of murder but sentenced to the time he already served.

    He was released from prison and has been challenging the ruling ever since.

    On Thursday, he posted a plea for legal help on his Facebook page.

    “I have no lawyer and no money to hire one,” he wrote. “Me standing up to what I felt was just wrong to get another ‘no contest’ backroom settlement instead of real exoneration and justice was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have nothing left but a determination to fight. I need lawyers. Someone help me. Please help me.”

    Cook is slated to go back to court on June 29 for that hearing on actual innocence. The case is being heard in the 114th District Court, with visiting Judge Jack Carter, of Texarkana presiding.

    http://www.cbs19.tv/story/32187347/k...-was-set-aside
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  8. #8
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Newport, United Kingdom
    Posts
    2,454
    Former Texas death row inmate to seek exoneration at hearing

    TYLER, Texas (AP) - A court hearing is planned for a former Texas death row inmate who has had a murder charge against him dropped but continues to seek a full exoneration.

    Kerry Max Cook is scheduled to appear in district court in Tyler on Friday to argue for a final ruling of actual innocence in the 1977 case of a 21-year-old woman found dead in her apartment.

    An angry Cook fired his attorneys about three weeks ago because they reached an agreement that included granting immunity to prosecutors involved in his 1978 conviction. Cook says he never OK'd the agreement.

    His new attorney, Houston lawyer Mark Bennett, says the judge overseeing Friday's hearing will forward a recommendation to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will determine whether Cook should be declared innocent.

    http://www.kxxv.com/story/32348404/f...ion-at-hearing

  9. #9
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    FRANCE
    Posts
    3,073
    Judge recommends against ruling Kerry Max Cook 'actually innocent'

    By Roy Maynard
    The Tyler Morning Telegraph

    A state district judge has declined to recommend that the state Court of Criminal Appeals approve Kerry Max Cook’s writ of actual innocence in the death of Linda Jo Edwards in 1977.

    Though Cook was twice convicted of her murder and spent nearly 20 years on death row, his conviction was set aside by Judge Jack Carter in June, following an agreement between Cook’s lawyers and the Smith County District Attorney’s Office. That was based on the fact that false evidence was given by a witness in Cook’s trials.

    But setting aside that verdict wasn’t a full exoneration. That’s something Cook sought with his writ. But Judge Carter, in his ruling released late Monday, found that Cook hadn’t met the high bar that “actual innocence” would require.

    “In order to meet this high standard of proof, the convicted defendant must show that new evidence, not available during trial, unquestionably establishes the applicant’s innocence,” Carter wrote. “Said another way, the new evidence must clearly and convincingly establish innocence. The applicant must show by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted him, in light of the new evidence.”

    But new evidence must be weighed against the whole, Carter said. And there’s undisputed evidence Cook was in the victim’s apartment - his fingerprint was found.

    And that witness who lied - former college dean James Mayfield - was shown to have had an affair with Ms. Edwards, but that’s all.

    “The ultimate issue in this case is a determination of who murdered Linda Edwards, not who had sexual relations with Linda Edwards,” Carter wrote. “(The new evidence) is definitely helpful to Cook’s defense, but this court does not find that it unquestionably proves that Cook is actually innocent.”

    Contacted late Monday, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he’s pleased with the recommendation, which will now go before the Court of Criminal Appeals.

    “I am aware Judge Carter denied Cook’s writ of actual innocence, which is what we believe the evidence supported and how we requested Judge Carter rule,” Bingham said by email.

    Bingham could conceivably retry Cook on the charges. He did not rule that out Monday night.

    “If the Court of Criminal Appeals adopts Judge Carter’s findings, then I will decide at that point how I will proceed,” he said.

    Cook was tried for the crime in 1978, convicted and sentenced to die by a Smith County jury. But the Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the case in 1989, because a psychologist had not read Cook his Miranda warning, thus rendering all information in the psychological interview useless.

    He was not freed at the time because he remained under indictment for capital murder, and then-Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen took two more tries at convicting Cook.

    In 1992, Smith County tried the case, but the jury deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. In 1994, Cook was found guilty of capital murder, but prosecutors used the testimony of a witness who had died. That was reversed by the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1997.

    In 1998, as Smith County was moving forward with a fourth trial, Skeen offered Cook a deal that would convict him of murder but would not require him to admit he killed the woman. In exchange for his plea of no contest, Cook was convicted of murder but sentenced to the time he already served.

    He was released from prison and has been challenging the ruling ever since.

    If he had been declared actually innocent, Cook would have been eligible for restitution from the State of Texas for as much as $1.6 million.

    Cook did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

    http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-News+Lo...ually-innocent

  10. #10
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Off death row but in limbo: Cook waits for Texas to act

    Kerry Max Cook, once just 11 days from execution, has been off Texas’ death row since 1996 and out of prison since 1997, but his fight for exoneration continues, with maddening slowness, as he waits for the state’s highest criminal court to finally act on his appeal.

    His wait turned 6 years old on Thursday.

    Citing new DNA evidence and a disturbing history of misconduct by former prosecutors in his case, Cook asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Aug. 25, 2016, to declare him innocent of the 1977 rape and murder of a neighbor, Linda Jo Edwards, in Tyler.

    The appeals court hands down its rulings every Wednesday at 9 a.m., and Cook has been online every week, searching in vain for a ruling on his case.

    For him, the torture begins Tuesday night.

    “I lay awake. I can’t sleep. By the time I get to the computer at 9 o’clock in the morning, I’m already exhausted. I’m wiped out because I’ve been up most of the night,” Cook said.

    “But I’m there. I’m sitting at a table with a dim light on, my fingers crossed: Is it going to mean actual innocence and an end to this nightmare?” he said from his home in Houston.

    Cook has been walking free since posting bond in 1997 after winning an earlier appeal, but “free” isn’t how he’d describe it.

    “I have a murder conviction. I can’t rent an apartment. I can’t even rent a hotel room. I can’t get a job. I’ve been run out of cities and towns when people find out I’ve been convicted of capital murder,” Cook said, adding that he’s been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. “I’ve lived a brutal life, and being innocent hasn’t mattered.”

    Cook spent a little more than 20 years behind bars. If exonerated, he would be eligible for a state payment of $80,000 for every year wrongfully incarcerated, or about $1.6 million in a lump sum and a $1.6 million annuity.

    2 trials, 2 death penalties

    Cook was convicted and sentenced to death twice for Edwards’ brutal murder, but both convictions were tossed out on appeal.

    His 1st death sentence, delivered in 1978, was overturned in 1991, but not because 2 important pieces of trial evidence were shown to be false — an expert who testified that Cook’s fingerprint at the crime scene was 6 to 12 hours old (such precision is not possible in fingerprint analysis), and a jailhouse informant who later admitted that he lied about Cook’s cellblock “confession” after prosecutors offered to drop a 1st-degree murder charge to involuntary manslaughter.

    Instead, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed on more technical grounds, ruling that Cook was not read his rights before being interviewed by a psychiatrist who declared him to be a continuing threat to society.

    A 2nd trial ended in a hung jury, but Cook was tried again in 1994, leading to a 2nd capital murder conviction and death sentence.

    2 years later, the Court of Criminal Appeals tossed out that conviction as well, noting that prosecutors had improperly suppressed evidence that was favorable to Cook. 2 of the appeals court’s judges pressed, unsuccessfully, to go even further and dismiss the murder charge against Cook, arguing that the prosecutors’ “misconduct in this case does not consist of an isolated incident ... but consists of the deliberate misconduct by members of the bar.”

    Undaunted, Smith County prosecutors were preparing for a 4th trial in 1999 when they offered Cook a deal — time served if he pleaded guilty to murder, or a life sentence, with the possibility of parole, for a no-contest plea. Cook refused — a response letter from his lawyer said he would never plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit — and prosecutors quickly countered with a limited-time offer — a sentence of time served in prison, and freedom, in exchange for pleading no contest.

    “Fearing that he might never be able to overcome the state’s misconduct in this case ... Cook, although reluctant, was rationally unable to turn down a ‘no contest’ plea that guaranteed his life and liberty and required no false admissions” of guilt, a legal brief by defense lawyers said.

    There was, however, a wrinkle in the case. Before the plea bargain ended the need for a trial, prosecutors had sent the victim’s underwear for DNA tests that were not available before earlier trials.

    2 months after Cook’s plea, the results came back from the Department of Public Safety. The semen on the fabric did not belong to Cook but instead pointed to the man who defense lawyers have long insisted was the killer — James Mayfield, the dean of library sciences at what is now the University of Texas at Tyler who had been having an extramarital affair with the victim for about 18 months.

    Follow-up tests by a private lab, conducted from 2012-15, confirmed that the semen belonged to Mayfield, who died in 2019, while Cook’s DNA was not found on other items that were tested, including the victim’s clothing, an apparent blood stain, a hair found on her body or the murder weapon, a knife.

    Cook was completely unsurprised.

    “I knew it was going to be Mayfield’s. I knew it,” he said recently. “Finally. Finally, the truth trumps the lies. It’s going to be over now. That was the one thing that can’t be twisted.”

    Disappointment, again In 2015, Cook launched his latest effort to clear his name — a petition filed in Smith County with 2 central requests:

    - Toss out his murder conviction as tainted.
    - Declare him innocent of the crime.

    As Jack Carter, a retired appellate court judge assigned to hear Cook’s petition, prepared to hold a hearing on the matter, prosecutors agreed to support overturning Cook’s conviction, leaving only his claim of innocence to be litigated.

    The judge released his findings in August 2016, saying he would recommend that the Court of Criminal Appeals toss out Cook’s conviction because his right to a fair trial was violated.

    Carter, however, declined to support a finding of actual innocence, saying evidence of Mayfield’s DNA and shifting accounts of a witness who first placed Mayfield at the murder scene before pointing the finger at Cook, was “definitely helpful” but did not unquestionably prove Cook’s innocence.

    Cook was devastated, complaining that his innocence claim was not properly heard because Mayfield was barred from testifying and because a hair found on the victim’s body was destroyed without DNA testing.

    Cook and Edwards, the victim, had already been excluded as the source of the hair, but he said the test could have traced it to Mayfield, a potentially important finding because Edwards had showered the night she was murdered, so a foreign hair likely belonged to the killer.

    “It was just more of the same,” he said. “How much can one person take?”

    Another bit of bad news came recently in a story about Cook’s case in the Tyler Loop, a nonprofit news site, that quoted Smith County District Attorney Jacob Putman as saying that short of a finding of actual innocence, Cook could be tried once again for capital murder but that it was too soon to say how the case would be handled.

    “It depends upon what the court decides,” Putman told the Tyler Loop.

    The quote brought Cook to tears when he spoke to the American-Statesman on the sixth anniversary of his current appeal.

    “I need someone to put an end to it. You keep giving them the right to try me, they’re going to do it. I’m 66. I don’t have any time left to spend with my family,” he said.

    ‘A purgatory of uncertainty’

    The Court of Criminal Appeals has the final say on criminal cases in Texas, with only the U.S. Supreme Court standing over the shoulder of its nine elected judges.

    The Texas court took receipt of Cook’s appeal on Aug. 25, 2016. There has been little visible progress on the case ever since.

    In May 2019, the court ordered the Smith County district clerk’s office to provide two dozen pieces of evidence — including police files and reports, crime scene photos, affidavits, grand jury transcripts and other statements — needed to fully examine Cook’s innocence claim.

    Cook’s lawyers, Keith Hampton of Austin and Glenn Garber and Rebecca Freedman with the nonprofit Exoneration Initiative, reviewed the court’s file in 2021 but could not find the missing evidence, copies of which they located from a previous defense lawyer and provided to the appeals court.

    Last April, Hampton followed up with a motion asking the court to act on Cook’s appeal by, at the very least, vacating his murder conviction if judges believed they needed more time to examine his claim of innocence.

    “Cook is 66 years old and, although out of prison, he remains in a purgatory of uncertainty in which he has unnecessarily suffered for his entire adult life,” the motion said, adding that a further delay “serves no purpose other than to cruelly string Cook along.”

    When asked to explain why Cook’s case has taken such an unusually long time to resolve, Sharon Keller, the court’s presiding judge, declined to comment, saying the state’s code of ethics prohibits judges from discussing pending matters.

    Cook said a final resolution to his case also is important for the victim, Linda Jo Edwards, and her family.

    “It’s not just accountability for me, it’s about a woman who lays in a grave who was viciously murdered and never had justice,” he said.

    (source: Austin American-Statesman)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •