TEXAS JUSTICE SYSTEM REFUSES TO ADMIT IT GOT IT WRONG

How unsurprising. And who cares if the real murderer goes free?

Prior to June 1977, Kerry Cook was just another 20-year-old guy from Tyler, Texas. Then he was sentenced to death for a rape and murder he said he didn't commit. Fast forward 20 years and science, not the justice system, proved he was right. Those 20 years in the violent world of Texas' death row were what Cook refers to as a real-life Sisyphus story - all uphill and getting nowhere. "It was like being in the Twilight Zone," said Cook, who is in Fort Collins to speak at several showings of "The Exonerated," a play based on his story - as well as the stories of five other wrongly convicted death row survivors. Cook will also present the program "Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction" today at the Foothills Unitarian Church.

Cook said his was a Murphy's Law case - "Everything that could go wrong did." A more plausible suspect - the victim's ex-boyfriend - was never arrested in the case. A confession Cook never made was entered into evidence. The lead investigator claimed Cook's fingerprint on the victim's patio door was six hours old, putting him there at the time of the murder. There is no way to determine the date of a fingerprint.

During his appeals process, these errors were noted as "harmless" in court transcripts, Cook said. "Because of the politics (surrounding the case and the death penalty), no one wanted to reverse the conviction," he said.

Death row was brutal, Cook said. He was raped repeatedly and stabbed. When he entered the system, Cook estimated there were about 50 men on Texas' death row. When he left, there were 450. In the 1990s, there could be as many as two executions a day. Many pleaded guilty just to avoid the death penalty in exchange for life in prison. Cook was offered the chance to plead guilty but said he couldn't do it. "It wasn't a tough choice," he said matter-of-factly. "I had no family left. The only thing I had was the integrity of my innocence."

Eventually Cook was offered, and accepted, an Alford Plea, which allowed him to assert his innocence but admit that sufficient evidence existed for a guilty sentence. In 1999, he was released from prison, but it was a hollow victory. Two years after his release, DNA evidence came back exonerating Cook of the crime and implicating the girl's ex-boyfriend.

However, the Texas justice system has never admitted any mistake in Cook's case, and no one else has ever been arrested for the crime. "You call Tyler, Texas, today, and they'll still say I'm guilty," he said.

Cook, now married with a 5-year-old son, is free and his story known throughout the world, but prison still haunts his daily life. Finding regular employment has been next to impossible, and Cook was recently denied an apartment in Dallas because of his criminal record. He makes his living traveling around the world talking about his experiences and protesting the death penalty. His book, "Chasing Justice" is due out in January.

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