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Tavis: In 1977, at the age of 20, Kerry Max Cook was arrested for a rape and murder he did not commit. But despite his pleas of innocence and rampant misconduct by prosecutors, he spent 20 years on death row in Texas. Finally in 1999, thanks to the help of DNA evidence, Kerry Max Cook was set free. Details of his remarkable story are told in the new book "Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit." Kerry Max Cook, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Kerry Max Cook: Pleasure to be here.

Tavis: It's good to see you. Take me back to 1977, Linda Jo Edwards, the person you were accused of raping. Take me back to '77 and tell me what happened.

Cook: First of all, you should know that my story is said to be one of the worst examples of police and prosecutorial misconduct in American history. Murphy's Law personified. Absolutely everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I met this woman in an apartment complex where I lived, went over to her apartment. We made out.

That's how my fingerprint got on the patio sliding door. Three days later, she's found raped and mutilated and butchered. Two months later, I'm arrested for a murder. And a succession of the worst misconduct, police and prosecutors working in tandem to literally frame me. It really was a framing job. They tweaked all the evidence; they aged the fingerprint to make it the murderous print instead of a casual encounter.

All the evidence that showed I knew the girl, they suppressed it. They hid it. Grand jury statements, sworn witness statements, they suppressed it and they brought out a story before the jury I was a maniacal homosexual killer who left those fingerprints, they were six to 12 hours old. The only way those prints could be there is the time of the murder.

And what would a homosexual want with a female but to butcher and murder her. I submit to you Kerry Max Cook has forfeited his right to walk among the children. The only verdict in this case is death. If you can't do it, leave that form blank and we'll get 12 people that can do it until it's finally done.

Tavis: Why, Kerry Max Cook, when you say the worst, most egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct, and you're not the only person to say that. This has been talked about in law schools, even, for how bad the prosecutors were in this case. Why you? Why frame Kerry Max Cook?

Cook: I'll tell you what, I had a lot of time on Texas' death row to figure that out. We, as human beings, just aren’t able to figure out - the worst thing that could happen to someone, to figure out why. I think what happened, first of all, she had a lover. He was a 45-year-old man. He was her married ex-lover, a man by the name of James Mayfield.

He was the original suspect. A great deal of information to show that he committed this crime. And I know that's difficult to believe. Why would they look the other way? Well, what happened, he hired the county's best lawyer. Instantly, immediately. The day Paula Rudolph, the eyewitness, was at the police station identifying him as the person she saw, he was hiring a lawyer named Buck Files.

And what Buck Files did, former prosecutor, very cozy with the nepotism, the good old boy network of east Texas criminal justice system, but especially indigenous to Texas, and he hired the county's best lawyer. And what he did is he shut the investigation down immediately. He told the police and the prosecutors the records show that they either charge his client or they were to immediately cease and desist from ever talking to him again.

So what that did, they weren’t able to have a - and Tavis, what you need to know about this crime, it was off the hook. She was found nude, mutilated, and the small east Texas town of Tyler, Texas was beside themselves. It was only after being in jail a year, getting a change of venue where I was able to see some of the press - I was in solitary confinement, nude, for a year, that I was able to see some of the press.

And the people weren’t sending their kids to school. They were demanding a suspect be caught. The police were just working double overtime investigating, trying to find a suspect in this case. In fact, when I'm arrested, the headlines are "Most intensive manhunt in east Texas history comes to an end with the arrest of Kerry Max Cook."

Tavis: Tell me your thoughts - you talk about this in the book, but for the audience, share with me your thoughts now about the affordability of justice. That is to say that you got railroaded in part because you couldn’t afford the best lawyer in town. The guy who was the prime suspect got off the hook, initially, because he could afford the best lawyer in town.

Cook: I'll tell you what, my sojourn in the American criminal justice system taught me many things. It taught me that there's Neiman & Marcus justice for the rich, and there's K-mart justice for the poor. The death penalty is often Black, Yellow, Brown, but it's always green. It's about the color of money you have in your back pocket.

Tavis: Tell me how you think it is that prosecutors get away with any kind of misconduct, but extreme misconduct in this case. Is it just because the public is crying for a suspect just because they want somebody locked up for this horrendous crime? Or is there something else being factored in here that I'm not focusing in on?

Cook: Prosecutors enjoy in this country what's called qualifying immunity. Tavis, basically what that is is a license to lie, cheat, and do whatever it takes to get a conviction. And in my case, the conservative court of criminal appeals that ultimately reversed my conviction ruled that police and prosecutors had engaged in fraud, that they had a win at all costs mentality, that they did any and everything it took to convict.

And what happened, it was pretty much like the proverbial doctor got caught in malpractice. They tried to bury their mistake. They tried to hurry up and get me executed. The more innocent I became, as horrendous as this sounds, the more my case evolved, and the more they made me look guilty. For example, my entire case was five witnesses, a two-hour verdict, and then the more innocent I became, it evolved into over 40 witnesses.

So I think - like you have the case, the lacrosse case at Duke University. Mike Nifong, here he's brought up before the North Carolina bar for withholding exculpatory evidence from the rich three's defense attorneys. That's not what happens to the Kerry Cooks of the world. We never enjoy that kind of honesty. In fact, the prosecutor who is mentioned in my appeals court, the second generation of district attorney who took me through this not only is now a state district judge, but at the height of all this publicity, the "Dallas Morning News" did an intensive, exhaustive investigative series on my story.

The first article read, front page, "Inmate was railroaded." And it encapsulated all the prosecutorial misconduct. Subordination of perjury, witness - it was unbelievable. What happened? The Texas Bar Association awarded him prosecutor of the year.

Tavis: Talk to me now about your sense - we talked earlier about your sense of prosecutors, certainly in your case. Talk to me now about the potential power - they don't always use it - but the power that the media does have to bring these kinds of issues to light when they take these cases seriously.

Cook: That's a great question, and I'll tell you why. You'll see this from my personal page acknowledgement. I thank people in the media, and I'll tell you why. It's so ironic that the same thing working in tandem with the criminal justice system that helped send me to death row in the end was what freed me.

Tavis: How do you navigate sitting on death row for 20 years? For two decades? How do you take that journey?

Cook: Well, people say to me, "How did you do that? How did you keep from going insane?" And to be quite frank with you, I don't think I didn’t go insane. I think I did go crazy. But what happened was when you read the book, you see - just go through this journey with me and it's - this is a book where the truth reads stranger than fiction.

But this really happened, vetted by one of the largest publishing companies in the world - in America. And I sat on death row, convicted for this horrendous crime, being brutalized all around me, living in fear, raped, nearly stabbed to death, family's gone, I have nothing or nobody, just myself. And I knew if I gave up, death was a certainty.

If I fight and do everything I could as a then-21 year old, I had a chance to live. I studied - first thing I did was I got a law book, because death row was always poor, there are no retained attorneys. Everyone's either a public defender or something like that. A lot of the pages from our archaic law books would be ripped out.

They use them for rolling papers. So I'd get to a case on, say, fundamental evidence doctrine, and I'd turn the page, it was gone. Oh, another smoker. So, I studied that backwards and forwards, even when it didn’t pertain to my case. And before my 22 years was up, I'd read the entire law library, and I was actually a well-known writ writer.

I helped get other people stays of executions. That's how I supported myself. I had absolutely no outside income. I never gave up; I never stopped writing the media, whatever I could do. And I charged, like, I'll do this stay of execution, but hey, can you just pay me a couple of stamps? I'll do it free, but I need my own story, my own case.

And prison wasn’t like you see on the show "Oz," or "Shawshank Redemption." Death row - just to put this theater in context here - when I got there, as subsequently my book shows, it was said to be the most dangerous, most violent prison system in America. It was so violent and so brutal that a federal judge ruled that doing time in a Texas prison constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Basically the administration had given the keys to the prison to the inmates. They had what was called building tenders. They were inmate prison guards. They wore knives. They could stab you. And then nothing happened to them. They kept you in line. If you weren’t a member of them, or you weren’t a snitch, or you didn’t work for the man, or you weren’t part of a gang, then you were sold into sexual slavery. And that's what happened to me.

Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question, 'cause there's so much here and my time is up. Let me ask what your sense is of whether or not the American public's sentiment is shifting on the death penalty? And if so, in what way?

Cook: I certainly think it's shifting. A few years ago there was a poll that 65 percent of Texas believed that we'd executed someone innocent. And I think this is so apropos, what's happened today. As I speak, there's a district attorney in San Antonio, Texas named Samuel Milsap. Not only has he confirmed that we've executed innocent people, and I'll get to your question.

But just to validate it more, he said that he personally persuaded a jury to convict and sentence Ruben Cantu to death. He was executed in 1999. This prosecutor's going around the country saying, "I had an innocent man put to death." And he's also saying, in the case of Cameron Willingham, that he was completely executed innocent.

And he's been very critical of other nation prosecutors not as forthcoming about the mistakes being made towards innocent people. But I think it's issues like that, admissions like that, and I think it's a book like this. If this book right here cannot become the clarion call for a moratorium on the death penalty, then it truly is hopeless and we poor people are truly without a voice.

Tavis: Well, the voice in this book is the voice of Kerry Max Cook. The new book is called "Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit." Kerry, thank you for your service in writing this book. I appreciate it.

Cook: Thank you very much for having me on the show.

Tavis: My pleasure.