Framed

6

Later, it was discovered that Dr. Landrum consistently misrepresented his résumé and used highly questionable practices.

He often testified under oath that he had a PhD in psychology, when in fact his doctorate was in education and personnel administration.

In 1982, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ridiculed Dr.

Landrum’s diagnosis of another Texas death row inmate’s future dangerousness as “ludicrous,”

one that “cannot be seriously considered.”

In that case Landrum rendered his opinion after silently observing the inmate for thirty minutes while sitting alone with him, the inmate refusing to speak the entire time.

The other primary witness against Kerry at the punishment hearing was Dr.

James Grigson, a forensic psychiatrist.

He examined Cook and also found him to have an antisocial personality, which he defined as a person without conscience who has no regard for another person’s life.

He went deeper and put him “at the very end, the very most severe [end] where you will find the sociopath,”

further adding: “You can’t come any more severe than that…I feel absolutely 100% certain that he is and will continue to be a threat no matter where he is.”

As it turned out, Dr.

Grigson was a career witness for the prosecution.

He had testified on behalf of the State in 167 capital trials, nearly all resulting in death sentences.

The press dubbed him “Dr. Death.”

He was eventually exposed as a prosecutorial shill and expelled by the American Psychiatric Association in 1995 for unethical conduct.

Professionally disgraced, he died in 2004 at age seventy-two.

But, of course, the jury knew none of this, and Kerry’s family had no money to pay an expert to rebut the testimonies of Landrum and Grigson.

On June 29, 1978, after only a few hours of testimony, the punishment phase of Kerry’s trial concluded: The jury voted unanimously for death.

The judge sentenced him immediately, stating, “Your punishment is assessed at death to be carried out by lethal injection.”

With that, Cook was quickly ushered out of the courtroom by deputy sheriffs and met by a horde of reporters and TV cameras.

When someone shouted, “Tell us why you did it”

he responded, “I am innocent.

I have been framed.

But one day I’ll prove I didn’t do it.

If it takes me ten years, or twenty years, I’ll prove I didn’t do it.”

—

On July 18, 1978, Kerry was permitted one last tearful embrace with his parents and brother Doyle Wayne at the Smith County jail.

After a deputy sheriff told Kerry, “It’s time to go home,”

the authorities put him in chains and drove him three hours south to the infamous death row unit outside Huntsville, Texas.

He was assigned the number 600, meaning he was the 600th person sentenced to death in Texas.

His new home was in a wing containing fifty cells.

His cell was three-sided with concrete walls, each 5'9" in length, with a sink, toilet, and a front door of steel bars operated electronically.

Daily routine was breakfast at 3:30 a.m.; then lunch at 9:45 a.m., capped off by dinner at 3:30 p.m.

Each meal was served on a metal tray pushed underneath the door by a trusty inmate (an inmate who had gained privileges for good behavior).

Lights out at 10:00 p.m.

Since Kerry’s case was widely reported, his reputation as a “homo punk” preceded him.

He was constantly ridiculed as a “pussy-eating faggot”

by his cellblock neighbors, who yelled and threatened to make him their “bitch.”

It was terrifying.

He was warned by a sympathetic inmate that when—not if—he was sexually assaulted, he must vigorously fight back as if his life depended on it, which it very well might.

If he didn’t, he would lose respect and become game for all.

Then it happened.

Kerry had mustered up the courage to go through the dayroom into the small recreation cage with other inmates.

Before he knew it, James Demouchette, a huge black man, instructed Kerry at knifepoint to strip naked while others looked on.

Kerry obeyed and braced for the inevitable.

When he was finished, Demouchette carved into Kerry’s buttocks Good Pussy and his new name for him, Cindy .From that point on, he was a lamb among wolves.

Overwhelmed by shame, Kerry cut his wrists with a razor blade.

This was the first time, but not the last, that he would attempt suicide.

When he recovered, he was moved to the front of the cellblock, closer to the guards’ station.

But the sexual abuse continued.

Perhaps he could have stopped the attacks if he had fought back, but he feared that, if he did, he might kill his tormentor, confirming the prosecutors’ belief that he was a killer.

He would then never escape the executioner.

Instead, he studied legal books from the law library, determined to find a way out by educating himself on Texas criminal law.

Meanwhile, the media had taken notice of Kerry’s conviction.

The first story to examine the State’s case with a critical eye appeared in a local paper in Longview, Texas, in April 1979.

Written by Bob Howie and headlined Is the Real Guilty Party Now Awaiting Execution on Death Row, the article caught the eye of Longview attorney Harry Heard, who offered, pro bono, to appeal Kerry’s conviction.

Then, a few months later, in June 1979, Dallas Morning News reporters Donnis Baggett and Howard Swindle published a bombshell.

Shyster Jackson, the jailhouse snitch who had lied about Kerry on the witness stand, had recanted his story to Baggett and Swindle—and a Texas Ranger named Stuart Dowell—in an interview the previous September.

Not only was his story about Kerry’s supposed “confession”

a complete fabrication, Shyster said that he cooked it up with the aid of District Attorney A. D. Clark in exchange for a sweetheart deal.

Instead of the maximum sentence of life that he could receive at his upcoming murder trial, he would be given a get-out-of-jail-free card—a sentence of twenty-one months in the county jail, which time he had already served.

Shyster jumped at the chance to walk free, and told his lie to Kerry’s jury.

Although Shyster now regretted the false testimony that had sent an innocent man to death row, he refused to sign an affidavit for Ranger Dowell, fearing a perjury charge.

He took off for his home state of Missouri, where in 1982 he committed another murder.

For that, he was tried, convicted, and received a life sentence after all.

Attorney Heard filed Kerry’s appeal and later argued it before Texas’s highest court, the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), on February 13, 1980.

He pointed out to the court that Jackson’s admission was indicative of the State’s trumped-up case against Cook.

His brief encompassed nineteen different errors at trial that he argued rendered the conviction unreliable and unconstitutional.

Kerry was cautiously optimistic that the CCA would rule in his favor.

But then the years ticked by with no decision.

On December 7, 1982, Texas executed its first man since 1964.

More years passed, and still the CCA sat on Kerry’s appeal.

Kerry’s only friend on death row, Kenneth Brock, was executed on June 19, 1986, even though the prosecutor who convicted him and the father of the victim appealed to Governor Mark White for a stay on his behalf.

Kerry was heartbroken.

He felt alone and forsaken.