Kerry Max Cook
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Kerry Max Cook (1956-present) is an former death-row inmate who was wrongly convicted for the rape and death of 21-year old Linda Jo Edwards in 1977. [1] He was born in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1972, he moved to Texas with his family. Kerry Max Cook served over 20 years in a Texas prison on death row. Since his release, Cook has become an activist against the death penalty speaking across the United States and in Europe. [2]
Mr. Cook has written a book published by HarperCollins entitled Chasing Justice[3] which details the story of his wrongful conviction, the widespread prosecutorial abuses which led to the conviction, and his battle to prove his innocence. He was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to write the book. In his advance blurb of the memoir, former FBI Director and Federal Judge William S. Sessions noted, “Kerry Max Cook has written a brutal but compelling account of his 22 years on Texas’s death row for a murder he didn’t commit. The book depicts his struggles against all odds to free himself from an inept justice system that would not let go, despite mounting and eventually overwhelming evidence of his innocence. What is perhaps most amazing is the grace with which he now lives his life as a free man, determined to prevent others from suffering the horrors he endured.”
Cook is one of six people whose stories were dramatized in the acclaimed play "The Exonerated" written by Eric Jensen and Jessica Blank, which relates how the six had each been wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but were later exonerated and freed after varying years of imprisonment. He often participates in the play. The Exonerated has been made into a film first aired on the CourtTV cable television on January 27, 2005.
