Well, citing egregious examples of police and prosecute prosecutorial misconduct,
the Texas Court of a Criminal appears appeals that is
has exonerated longtime death row inmate Carrie Max Cook, who
was unjustly convicted of killing an East Texas woman back
in 1977.
FOX 26 is Greg Rugen here with details and reaction
from a fellow prisoner on death row.
Yeah, Rashi Kerry.
Max Cook was falsely accused of the rape, murder and
mutilation of 21 year old Linda Joe Edwards.
After three trials, two full decades on death row and
the passage of nearly half a century, the state of
Texas has now formally cleared him of all charges, his
innocence established by DNA evidence and the recanted testimony of
a jailhouse snitch.
Cook avoided a fourth trial back in 1999 by taking
a plea deal for time served.
In its ruling this week, the Court of Criminal Appeals
found prosecutors withheld critical evidence while falsifying evidence presented at
trial.
Now, here in Houston, the news of Cook's exoneration was
greeted with tremendous joy by friend and fellow inmate Anthony
Graves, who was also wrongly convicted and faced execution before
his innocence was officially acknowledged.
After 18 years on death row, Anthony says he and
Kerry Max Cook were hardly the only men falsely imprisoned
and facing lethal injection.
We know now that when you and Kerry were on
death row, there were two innocent men.
Yes, Sir.
Were there more?
Of course, there are more and we executed them.
We executed, but there were definitely more.
Kerry, Max Cook and Anthony Graves were not isolated incidents
we were allowed to repeat.
Out of many people who probably innocent.
We won the lottery picks.
And I'm telling you, if we do our due diligence,
we're going to find other innocent people on death row.
I'm death row exoneree #138 we almost up to 200
exonerees.
So the question should be now does the death penalty
work?
Almost 200 people that came home off of America's death
row that now have been found to be innocent.
How can we still support that?
Anthony Graves is now community outreach director for the Harris
County Public Defender's Office and says it's cause for celebration
that the Texas criminal justice system finally got it right
for Kerry Max Cook, even though it took 47 years
in the studio.
Greg Grogan, FOX 26 News.