Exonerated: Kerry Max Cook speaks at Ithaca College

-Kaitlyn Rich

On Friday Kerry Max Cook spoke to a packed audience in Textor room 102 about his life - spending over 20 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. Speaking in his southern accent Kerry recounted how at the age of 19 he was wrongfully arrested and pressured to confess to the murder of a woman he had only met once. The details of his trial and life in prison were shocking and heart-wrenching. While in solitary confinement he stacked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to keep track of time, and during his imprisonment he lost his beloved brother and father.

Cook was sentenced to death with only a fingerprints worth of evidence and a false testimony by a bribed inmate against him. The prosecution threw out all 13 other fingerprints and didn't test the blood at the crime scene because, as Cook says, "They said it was the same color as the rest of the blood there." 

"If you google my name it comes up as the worst case of prosetorial misconduct in the history of the United States," said Cook. All the horrible details of the failings of the American justice system and its effect on Cook's, and others, lives where brought to reality in the play "The Exonerated" performed by the Ithaca College Theater Department. The Saturday night performance offered a talk back with Cook, where students and Ithaca residents alike asked Cook questions struggling to comprehend the unfathomable experience him, and the five other stories in the play, went through. Cook told the crowd that he survived his challenges by finding forgiveness and perseverance in the face of adversity.