Excerpted from "Mean Justice" by Edward Humes, Pocket Star Books, 1999.

Kerry Max Cook, sentenced to death for a 1977 mutilation-murder in Tyler, Texas, has his sentence overturned because of systematic government misconduct and the hiding of evidence in his favor. The same Smith County District Attorney's Office that prosecuted Andrew Mitchell also prosecuted Cook. (Cook was tried and convicted again, but, in 1996, he was granted yet another new trial, again because the appeals court found "prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this entire matter from the outset." Cook was subsequently released on bail while authorities decide whether to try him yet again, after spending twenty of his forty-one years on death row).