Every Wednesday for the last eight years, Kerry Max Cook has gone to the website of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals at 9 a.m. to scan the list of rulings officially published that day. He was looking to see if the court—the highest criminal tribunal in the state—had issued a final judgment on his case, which was one of the longest and most harrowing in Texas history. The mild-mannered Cook had been tried for the murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler three times since 1978: he was found guilty that year, appealed the verdict and had a mistrial in 1992, and was found guilty again in 1994. Constantly proclaiming his innocence, Cook spent almost two decades on death row, where he was stabbed…
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