Framed

7

Then came the real blow.

On December 9, 1987, the CCA denied his appeal.

The court had sat on his petition almost eight years, the longest time without a ruling for a direct appeal in American history.

The CCA’s vote to uphold the conviction was 8–1.

The court cited Jackson’s jailhouse confession, Paula Rudolph’s identification, and Cook’s patio prints as more than sufficient evidence to convict the defendant.

It did agree with one of attorney Heard’s arguments, that is, that Dr.

Grigson’s punishment phase testimony was inadmissible because Dr.

Grigson had interviewed Kerry to assess his future dangerousness without notifying Kerry’s attorneys or obtaining their permission to do so.

However, the court ruled that the admission of Dr.

Grigson’s testimony had been a harmless error, because Dr.

Landrum had offered a similar opinion, finding Kerry beyond rehabilitation.

Justice Sam Houston Clinton offered the lone dissent.

At the outset of his twenty-two-page opinion he stated there were “troublesome aspects”

to this case, and “a rational reviewer of all the facts is left with serious questions whether a rational trier of fact could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Justice Clinton was particularly troubled by Paula Rudolph’s identification.

He devoted thirteen pages to analyzing her testimony and questioning its reliability.

He was also concerned that the unidentified fingerprint found on the scissors had a whorl pattern when Kerry’s print didn’t have that characteristic.

Also, with the exception of the fingerprint on the patio door, Kerry’s prints were nowhere else in the apartment.

In contrast, there were five other unidentified fingerprints found—none of them Kerry’s.

Clinton was not impressed with Jackson’s confession testimony, which he believed was the “most incriminating”

flaw in the case.

Nor did he grant much weight to Robert Hoehn’s graphic testimony about the sex acts they had supposedly performed the night of the murder.

Mere days after receiving the CCA’s decision, Kerry received more crushing news: His dear brother, thirty-three-year-old Doyle Wayne, was dead—murdered in a tragic misunderstanding.

Doyle Wayne had been enjoying an evening at a Longview club with a friend.

Around closing time, the friend had yanked a pair of sunglasses from the face of another patron.

Thinking Doyle Wayne was the culprit, the man had pressed a .44 Magnum revolver against his neck and shot him dead.

(The shooter was caught and would plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

For taking Doyle Wayne’s life, he’d receive sixteen years in prison.) The loss of both sons was almost too much for the Cooks to bear.

Three days after learning of his brother’s death, Cook was once again raped.

Hopelessness consumed him and triggered a second suicide attempt.

Once again he cut himself with a razor blade, this time slashing his wrist, legs, and penis.

Miraculously he survived and spent the next two years receiving in-patient treatment from the prison’s psychiatric team.

Such attention was unheard of on death row.

At last, someone showed kindness and compassionate care to Kerry Max Cook.

—

In 1988, events started to turn in Kerry’s favor.

In February he attracted a talented lawyer to his cause, Scott Howe of the newly established Capital Punishment Project, which represented death row inmates.

Howe’s immediate concern was keeping Cook alive.

Smith County judge Joe Tunnell, newly assigned to preside over the Cook case, had set a July 8, 1988, execution date.

Howe appealed that decision to the U.S.

Supreme Court and asked for a stay of execution.

On June 28, 1988, eleven days before Kerry was to die, the court granted the stay and remanded the case back to the CCA for reconsideration.

The CCA reconsidered.

On January 17, 1990, it once again reaffirmed the Cook conviction and sentence.

But then, six months later, on June 13, something shocking occurred.

This same court had a change of heart.

In an almost unprecedented moment of self-reflection that stunned the legal world, it granted Scott Howe’s request for a rehearing, and renewed Kerry’s hope for a retrial.

Shortly after the CCA reopened Kerry’s case, Scott Howe obtained two critical affidavits.

One was offered by retired George Bonebrake, former director of the FBI’s Fingerprint Section and a nationally renowned expert with more than forty years’ experience.

After examining Lieutenant Collard’s testimony, Bonebrake was disturbed by many of Collard’s determinations.

He was most concerned that Collard had aged the patio door prints to the hour.

He deemed this conclusion “entirely unreliable,”

stating that it “was impossible to determine whether the print was left on the door two hours or two weeks before it was discovered by the police.”

He added that “it is an accepted principle in the fingerprint examination field that an examiner cannot determine with reasonable accuracy the age of a fingerprint.”

Howe also obtained a sworn statement from Dr. Gary Mears, a tenured professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Tyler, who had chaired the Department of Psychology there from 1973 through 1985.

Dr. Mears recounted that Jim Mayfield, a day or two after Linda Jo’s homicide, came to his office and asked him how to “beat”

a polygraph.

Mayfield knew that Mears had a polygraph machine in his laboratory and was a student of polygraph science.

In that conversation, Mears confronted Mayfield about a book he had recently stumbled across in the university library called The Sexual Criminal .

Published in 1949, the book contained police photographs of murdered women whose sexual organs had been mutilated.

Chillingly, the photos mirrored Linda’s wounds.

After finding the book by happenstance, Dr.

Mears had discovered that Mayfield himself had ordered the book for the library.

Embarrassed, Mayfield had lamely said, “I have more books like that one, too.”

That same afternoon, Mears reported this conversation to a senior Tyler police officer, who seemed disinterested and never followed up.

Not only that, but when Mears bumped into Mayfield the next day, Mayfield told him the police had passed along to his lawyer the tips Mears had given them about the book and polygraph.

Mears was stunned.

It was as if the police were working with Mayfield instead of treating him as a suspect.