The Trouble with Innocence

Michael Hall

Jan 2018 · Penguin Random House Audio · Kuchazwe ngu-Christopher Ryan Grant

Mayelana nale audiobook

In partnership with Texas Monthly, Michael Hall's "The Trouble with Innocence" is now available as an audio download, where the length and timeliness of a podcast meets the high-quality production of a full-length audio program.

In 1978, a Texas jury found Kerry Max Cook guilty of the state's most brutal murder on record and sentenced him to death row. Cook swore that, no matter how long it took, he would prove his innocence, unearth the truth, and free himself from this sentence. Spanning decades, numerous lawyers, and meanwhile the physical and psychological abuse of prison, Cook would be prosecuted four times, only to have the veil of innocence narrowly evade him in the end.

"The Trouble with Innocence" opens with the hearing that would exonerate Cook nearly forty years after his original sentence. Exoneration, after all he had been through, was not enough for Cook, who then asked for his wrongful conviction back rather than live with this injustice. Michael Hall lays out Cook's grueling journey through the Texas justice and prison system in an attempt to answer: how could someone sabotage their own exoneration?

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MICHAEL HALL graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979 with a degree in government. He wrote for various publications, including Trouser Press, Third Coast Magazine, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Austin Chronicle. In 1997 he joined Texas Monthly, where he has won two Texas Gavel Awards from the State Bar of Texas and three Stephen Philbin Awards from the Dallas Bar Association. He was named the CRMA's Writer of the Year in 2015. Hall's stories have appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Da Capo Best Music Writing, the New York Times, and Men's Journal. Hall is also a musician and has played in Austin bands such as Wild Seeds, the Setters, the Lollygaggers, and the Savage Trip.