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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.

After Death Row in Texas, I'm Fighting to End the Death Penalty

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Texas Death House
Texas Death House
My name is Kerry Max Cook, but for 2 decades, I was known as "Cook, Execution number 600." Innocent of the murder and rape I was accused of in 1977, my home became a tiny death row cell in Texas, the state that kills more people than anywhere else in the U.S. by far -- including 141 of my fellow inmates before my release in 1999. By then, my only brother had been murdered and my Dad had died of cancer. My Mom died soon after. I was stabbed, raped and routinely abused on death row. My ordeal spanned 2 generations of the Smith County District Attorney's office, 2 wrongful convictions, 2 reversals of conviction, a walk to the execution chamber, and 3 capital murder trials. My legal team and I have been unable to find a worst case of prosecutorial misconduct in Texan history.

I avoided a 4th trial only by pleading no contest, while making no admission of guilt. I have never been officially exonerated. Author John Grisham said, "If it were fiction, no one would believe it ..."

I am, in fact, innocent. Another man's DNA was found on the victim's clothing 2 months after my release. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals accused Smith County prosecutors of "willful misconduct" in my case. Nonetheless that office remains determined to stop me clearing my name. My lawyers are working to file an application for writ of habeas corpus in coming months, hopefully prompting the appeals court in Austin to officially exonerate me and end my 36-year-old nightmare.


Source: Kerry Max Cook, Former inmate on death row in Texas; author and activist, Huffington Post, Feb. 22, 2014
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