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My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit
William Morrow
March 2007
On Sale: February 28, 2007
352 pages ISBN: 006057464X EAN: 9780060574642 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A brilliant and unprecedented work, Chasing Justice is the
riveting chronicle of 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
twenty-two harrowing years. Kerry Max Cook is one of the
longest-tenured death-row prisoners to be freed: This is his
unbelievable story and the only fi rsthand account of its kind. Wrongfully convicted of killing a young woman in Texas, Cook
was sentenced to death in 1978 and served two decades on
death row, 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." As
scores of men around him were executed, Cook relentlessly
battled a legal system that wanted him dead; meanwhile he
fought daily to survive amid unspeakable conditions and
routine assaults. 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. And finally in the spring of 1999 long-overlooked DNA
evidence was tested and it linked another man to the rape
and murder for which Cook had been convicted. Today, Cook is
a free man and the proud father of a young son. A shocking look inside death row, a legal thriller, and an
inspirational story of one man's ultimately triumphant fight
against extreme adversity, Chasing Justice is a landmark
work, written with the powerful authenticity of Cook's own
hand. It will forever unsettle our view of the American
justice system.
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