01847cam a2200301 4500 424327608 TxAuBib 20070418120000.0 060807s2007||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2006049172 9780060574642 006057464X (OCoLC)71006815 DLC DLC BAKER UKM VP@ YDXCP C#P BUR BTCTA GK8 TxAuBib Cook, Kerry Max, 1956- Chasing justice : my story of freeing myself after two decades on death row for a crime I didn't commit. New York : Morrow, 2007. x, 342 p. ; 24 cm. Death penalty. Chronicles how a smalltown murder became one of the worst cases of prosecutorial misconduct in American history, and sent the author, an innocent man, to hell for 22 harrowing years--Cook is one of the longest-tenured death-row prisoners to be freed. Convicted of killing a young woman in Texas, Cook was sentenced to death in 1978 and served two decades in a prison system so notoriously brutal and violent that in 1980 a federal court ruled that serving time in Texas's jails was "cruel and unusual punishment." When an advocate and a crusading lawyer joined his struggle in the 1990s, a series of retrials was forced. At last, in November 1996, Texas's highest appeals court threw out Cook's conviction, citing overwhelming evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct. Finally in 1999 long-overlooked DNA evidence linked another man to the rape and murder for which Cook had been convicted. 20070418. Cook, Kerry Max 1956- Trials (Rape.) Trials (Murder.) Judicial error. Death row. Capital punishment.