A report by the Texas Tribune stated that Kerry Cook was innocent of the murder of Linda Edwards, which he was convicted of in 1977.
He spent two decades on death row due to prosecutorial misconduct. In 2016, his conviction was set aside.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction on Wednesday.
In a majority opinion, Judge Bert Richardson stated that the case was full of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
He also noted that the evidence presented in the case supported Cook’s actual innocence.
After his release, Cook became an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
According to Richardson, the ruling ends a 40-year legal saga that was marked by deception.
In East Texas, prosecutors accused Cook of raping and killing Edwards, who was only 21 years old at that time.
His first conviction was overturned in 1978. His second trial ended in a mistrial in 1992, and a third one in 1994 resulted in a new sentence.
The Criminal Appeals Court overturned Cook’s second conviction in 1996.
It noted that the case was tainted from the beginning due to prosecutorial misconduct.
The district attorney then tried Cook again in 1999, but he was released after reaching a plea deal.
Until Wednesday, he was still considered a murderer in Texas. The Court of Criminal Appeals cited numerous instances of prosecutorial and police misconduct.
During his trial in 1978, the prosecutors withheld evidence that could have helped his defense team. They also presented false evidence.
The prosecutors’ key witness against Cook was a jailhouse informant who claimed that he saw the defendant at the Smith County jail.
After he recanted his testimony, the prosecutors revealed that they had agreed to drop the first-degree murder charge against him in exchange for his damaging evidence.
