Wrongly convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a young woman, Kerry Max Cook served 20 years on Texas Death Row. As part of Trojan Parents Weekend, USC Law has invited Cook — the longest-tenured death-row inmate in U.S. history to be freed — to speak to the university community about his fight for justice.
The talk, “11 Days from Execution,” will take place Thursday, Oct. 11, from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Room 3 of the law school, with seating and lunch provided on a first-come,
first-served basis. Cook will be introduced by USC Law Professor Dan Simon and Chapman University Law School Professor Scott Howe, the appellate attorney responsible for getting Cook’s first wrongful conviction overturned. After the talk, Cook will sign copies of his book, Chasing Justice.
“Cook’s case is a troubling exemplar of how the criminal justice system can be abused in the persecution of an individual, and how appallingly convicted inmates can be treated in this country,” said Simon. “It is also a gripping story about the resilience of a man pushed to the verge of an abyss.”
In the summer of 1977, 20-year-old Cook was staying with a friend in Tyler, Texas, when he met 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards and was invited back to her home. Four days later, Edwards was found raped and murdered in her apartment. Bowing to public outrage, the local police sought to make a quick arrest. With only a single fingerprint on a sliding glass door to link Cook to the crime, the police charged him with murder.
Although it is scientifically impossible to age a fingerprint, detectives testified that Cook’s fingerprint was left within 6 to 12 hours of Edwards’ death. Cook’s fellow inmate Edward “Shyster” Jackson also falsely testified that Cook confessed to the murder during a jailhouse conversation. Jackson was set free in exchange for his testimony, only to kill again several years later. Cook, lacking the resources for a proper defense, was convicted and sentenced to death.
After his 1978 sentence, Cook spent more than two decades on Texas Death Row. As scores of his fellow inmates were executed, Cook lived through unspeakable traumas including physical and sexual assault. Cook’s luck changed after a crusading lawyer joined his struggle in the 1990s and forced a series of retrials. In November 1996, Texas’s highest appeals court threw out Cook’s conviction, citing overwhelming evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct. In the spring of 1999, long-overlooked DNA evidence was found, tested and used to link another man to the crime.
Kerry Max Cook was born in Stuttgart, Germany, into an Army family, and spent much of his youth on Army bases. He returned to the United States with his family in 1972 to live in Texas. Since gaining his freedom, Cook has been an outspoken advocate for legal reform. He has lectured at Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago. He wrote a book, published by HarperCollins earlier this year, based on his experiences: Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit.
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