Believe Me, I Understood

Many people in the death penalty abolition movement have heard Kerry Max Cook's story of spending two decades on Texas's death row for a crime he didn't commit. Indeed, by now Kerry's story has become widely known outside of the abolition movement, too, because he has been featured in the play The Exonerated and because Kerry is such a powerful public speaker and he tries whenever possible to speak to pro-death penalty audiences, rather than only to those who come in already predisposed to sympathize with him.

Though a growing number of people know Kerry's innocence story, fewer people know that Kerry is also a family member of a murder victim. His brother, Doyle Wayne Cook, was murdered in Texas while Kerry was still in prison. In his new book Chasing Justice, Kerry tells about standing in the prison chaplain's office and hearing the news of his brother's murder. He then writes, "The bullet Ben Franklin Williams fired that night ended my brother's life, but it also shattered something in my own. For the first time, I knew the hatred felt by a victim's family member when they are left to deal with what remains of their loved one after a senseless crime. Believe me, I understood."

Like so many family members of homicide victims, Kerry was overwhelmed by rage and grief. But he was in prison, innocent of the crime for which he had been convicted, experiencing the horrors and humiliations of death row (even if you already think you have a sense of what death row is like, you'll be knocked down by Kerry's descriptions of what the experience does to a person, not just externally but internally).

Kerry knew from his own experience that wrongful convictions are "the collateral damage of the death penalty." He paid an almost impossibly high price for the flaws in the death penalty system, and it's not a price he thinks he or anyone should be willing to pay. So, even as he understands the anguish of a victim's family member, he cannot support the death penalty.

After reading about what Kerry went through, it's hard to imagine how anyone could support it. Chasing Justice is a powerful and important read.