Kerry Max Cook is suing Tyler and Smith County

TYLER – Kerry Max Cook was found innocent of the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards back in June and now he’s suing Smith County and the City of Tyler. According to our news partner KETK, the allegations of his lawsuit are listed in a complaint filed by Cook’s lawyers Nov. 14. The complaint alleges that the City of Tyler, Smith County and several named officials violated his civil rights by engaging in a “homosexual witch-hunt” which led to him spending 20 years on death row for a crime he’s been found innocent of by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Cook stated in the release, “For over 20 years I fought for my life from a death row cell,” Cook said in a press release. “After being kicked out the back door of Smith County’s legal system in 1999, I fought for another 25 years to clear me and my family’s name. This year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals finally declared me ‘actually innocent,’ but my struggle does not end there. Today, I am pressing forward with a civil suit against the officers who framed me and against the broken Tyler and Smith County police agencies that let it happen.”

The murder charges against Cook were dropped back in 2016 after a key witness reportedly admitted to lying in previous trials. By 2016, Cook had already been out of prison for several years after he took a deal in 1998 that convicted him of murder but did not require him to admit guilt.

That witness was James Mayfield, who Cook’s complaint said was once in a relationship with Edwards. His complaint said that officials he’s suing “actively and systematically disregarded, downplayed, and concealed obvious evidence pointing to the victim’s married, 44-year-old disgruntled ex-lover, James Mayfield.

“This case is riddled with allegations of State misconduct that warrant setting aside Applicant’s conviction,” Judge Bert Richardson wrote in the Criminal Court of Appeals majority opinion back in June of this year. “And when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all — uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury and new scientific evidence.”

The complaint then lists evidence they say implicated Mayfield in Edward’s death. They allege this evidence was ignored and that the evidence against Cook was manufactured after the defendants made a “sham psychological profile of the killer as a homosexual man—fueled entirely by bigotry rather than police investigation.”

When the complaint begins to list their facts of the case they allege that Cook wasn’t the only person accused in this fashion. “In the mid-1970s, during the years leading up to the Edwards murder, law enforcement officials working for the City of Tyler and Smith County operated under an unwritten policy to rid the County of “undesirable” citizens, including LGBT people, by fabricating evidence to implicate those people in crimes they did not commit,” the complaint alleged.

Cook also said in the complaint, “My civil suit seeks justice and accountability for the injustices done to both Linda Edwards’ family and mine by framing me for a crime I didn’t commit. But it’s also for the many others who have suffered injustice at the hands of Smith County’s dark history.”

A spokesperson for the City of Tyler said that they don’t comment on pending litigation. Smith County officials were also asked to comment on this report.