Death row inmate trying to save another man's life

07:01 PM CST on Monday, December 13, 2004

By Dan Lauck / 11 News

Click to watch video

Talk to criminal defense attorneys and some may tell you the death penalty system in the United States is broken. That's also the message in a widely-heralded play called "Exonerated" that recounts true stories of Texas death row inmates.

One of those stories involves Kerry Max Cook.

Behind the razor wire on death row, everyone proclaims his innocence and no one believes a word of it.

"That's why it's so hard when you really are innocent -- nobody believes you. Not even the other prisoners believe you," said Cook.

Cook was on death row himself when he first heard about Anthony Graves who had a cell of his own on death row.

Graves had been convicted as the accomplice in a gruesome, sensational murder of six people -- four of them children -- in the tiny town of Somerville.

He was convicted even though there was no evidence he was at the crime scene. He was convicted almost solely by the testimony of one man -- the murderer.

Robert Carter was on death row himself and Cook went to see him.

"It was just me and him there and God," Cook said.

Carter, he says, confessed that he implicated Graves in exchange for a deal with the prosecutor.

Even on death row, Cook was shocked.

"You're telling me you implicated this man falsely? He's really totally innocent?" Cook said he asked Carter. "He said, 'yeah, man.'"

"No one's forced you to make this statement?," asked 11 News reporter Dan Lauck. "No."

Carter publicly confessed later but Graves' attorney, Jay Burnett, says it may have come too late in the legal process.

"At this point, no court has formally heard the fact that Carter recanted," Burnett said.

The end to Anthony Graves' appeals is drawing close.

"He's innocent and he's gonna die," Cook said. "And nobody cares."

Meanwhile, Kerry Cook's story in "Exonerated" is playing across the country to rave reviews.