The studies confirmed that hairs found on the victim’s clothing didn’t belong to either Cook or Meadows. With the help of Leroy Maxwell, a post-conviction attorney in Birmingham, the men filed a petition for a retrial based on the new evidence."
-------------------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Officer is ‘concerned that the County was not including his reports’" At a hearing on Oct. 12, Terry Miller, the officer who made the original report, testified that he had been concerned that prosecutors were not “including his reports in the County Investigative Files,” according to court documents. Years after he filed that report, Miller left the Leeds Police Department and joined the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, where he was supervised by Major. Major estimates that sometime in the mid-2010s, Miller told Major he was concerned that some of his previous police reports weren’t included in investigative files. At the time, Major said he didn’t know the importance of that statement. “It was not until I investigated this case that I could understand why Miller had those concerns,” Major said in a recent phone interview. Major is now chief of police of Tarrant, another Birmingham suburb.
--------------------------------------------------------------
GIST: "The words swirled around Quinton Cook’s head as he sat in the Jefferson County Jail. He figured the attorneys and judge were right, so he believed them. His brother Frank Meadows, also in the jail, believed them, too. Those words reassured them that their innocence would come out at trial.
What happened next was a nightmare.
“From believing that, I winded up being in prison for 20 years of my life,” Cook said.
Cook and Meadows were convicted in 1994 of first-degree rape and sentenced to 20 years in an Alabama prison without any physical evidence linking them to the crime. They served the entirety of their sentences.
On Oct. 25, a Jefferson County judge exonerated them.
A police report and blood — collected from the scene never presented at trial — re-emerged by chance nearly 30 years later and showed that they were innocent.
“Since the police report contained exculpatory evidence that was recklessly not provided to the defense, petitioner is entitled to relief,” wrote Jefferson County Circuit Judge Shanta Owens.
The bad dream they thought they’d never wake from is finally over, but having their innocence recognized feels just as surreal, Cook said.
“When the truth finally comes out, it takes a moment for you to realize that it really just came out,” Meadows said. “When you done walked with your head down so long, it gets hard to hold it up at times.”
Perhaps most striking about Cook and Meadows now, men who spent their 20s and 30s in prison for a crime a judge ruled they did not commit, is the grace with which they speak about their conviction. They aren't resentful toward those responsible for the injustice, from the district attorney to the judge. “I can’t say I was angry,” Cook said. “I will say I was scared, and I was disappointed.
“I’ve kind of justified it with saying that God does everything for a reason,” he said. “I came to the conclusion, understanding that, well, if I’m going to be mad, I’ve got to be mad at God because he allowed the devil to do this. I couldn’t walk around mad and angry.”
‘You done raped that girl’
In early 1992, Cook and Meadows lived with their parents in Leeds, a suburb of Birmingham. At 20 and 18, the two were trying to “establish a life outside of their family,” still having fun partying, drinking and going to football games.
Cook stopped at a convenience store as he was going to pick up his girlfriend from work on April 21, 1992. He remembers that when he walked out, police officers with guns drawn then threw him down on the ground before putting him in the cruiser to take him to jail.
“It came out of nowhere,” he said.
He asked them what he’d done.
“You know what you did,” he recalls police telling him. “You done raped that girl.”
Meadows was arrested four months later in connection to the same crime.
April 12, 1992: A violent assault
On April 11, 1992, a 28-year-old woman walked to what was then the Patio Lounge, a Leeds nightclub. Needing a ride home on the early morning of April 12, she talked to a friend who agreed to drive her.
But when she walked outside the bar, she asked two men to take her home instead, according to court records.
The three got in the car, with the woman and one of the men in the backseat. The man in the backseat then began to beat her with his fist. A police report from that night said her eyes were swollen so badly that she couldn’t see. She was then taken to a remote area where the two men raped her.
After being assaulted, the woman walked to a nearby home and called 911. Terry Miller, an officer with the Leeds Police Department, filed the first police report of the incident at 7:22 a.m.
The report includes the original statement the victim gave to police, in which she said she was attacked by two men from Pell City, one of which was named “Ray.”
In later testimony, “Ray” was described as a tall and slender man, unlike Meadows and Cook, who were both 5-foot-8 and weighed 185 pounds or more at the time, according to court records.
Blood was also collected from the scene.
But in a second police report created more than a month after the incident, police said that on April 14, two days after the attack, the victim identified Cook and Meadows as the men who raped her.
Meadows had been at the bar that night, but he said he left with his uncle and two women at a different time than when the victim left. Cook was at home, nursing a toothache.
The Montgomery Advertiser does not name victims of rape or sexual assault, except in rare circumstances, such as a homicide or when the victim grants permission to be identified.
The victim in this case has since died.
No physical evidence linking Cook, Meadows to crime
After a one-week trial that began on Monday, Dec. 13, 1993, a jury found the men guilty of first-degree rape. They would later be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
They looked at their mother. She fainted when she heard the verdict. Jerry Quick, Meadows’ attorney at the time, said he couldn’t believe it.
The prosecution’s argument had rested on the testimony of the victim, who was insistent that Cook and Meadows raped her.
Defence attorney (Jerry) Quick said he had focused on the fact there was no physical evidence linking the men to the crime but felt that jurors were sympathetic to the victim based on the traumatic details of the crime.
Notably missing from the evidence was the original police report that identified “Ray,” a tall and slender Pell City man, as the perpetrator. T
The blood collected from the crime scene was also missing and had never been tested for DNA matching.
Somewhere between the Leeds Police Department and the courthouse, the evidence went missing.
In a phone interview this week, Quick said he had no clue it existed at the time of the trial. It’s unclear still whether the prosecution had seen the report or the evidence. It had practically vanished from the record.
Until it showed back up.
‘Do your time, or you’ll let your time do you’
After being processed in Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery, Cook and Meadows were sent to Fountain Correctional Facility. They were eventually moved to Draper Correctional Facility, which has since closed.
In his early days in prison, Cook felt like he had to tell everybody that he was innocent. It was the only thing he knew for certain, he said. But he realized that wasn’t going to do any good. An older man in the prison sat him down one day and told him, “You’ve got to do your time, or you’ll let your time do you.”
That’s when his mindset changed. He decided to make the most of a bleak situation.
A junior high dropout, Cook earned his G.E.D. Then he got an associate’s degree in business. Then he got his barbering license.
“I started to educate myself about the life that I wanted after prison,” he said. “And that’s when I took on a whole different direction.”
Meadows, who had also dropped out of school, educated himself in prison too. It was there that he found new purpose for his life in Christianity.
“I began to get on my knees and pray, and I began to seek God and study the word of God,” Meadows said.
Throughout, the courts and parole board denied their appeals and parole requests.
In 2014 and 2015, respectively, Meadows and Cook returned home
. But the injustice didn’t stop there — Cook had to inform his son’s school that he was a convicted sex offender.
“People talk,” Cook said. “And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out when somebody's talking about you. And you stand over there and you're just trying to act normal like everything is OK when it’s not.”
The report reappears
Cook and Meadows were released in 2014 and 2015, respectively. In 2019, Sharon Cook went to the Leeds Police Department for an unrelated matter involving her now ex-husband, Quinton Cook. Before she left, a female dispatcher handed her a stack of files.
As she looked through it, she noticed something she had never seen before: the original police report.
Quinton Cook and Meadows took the rediscovered report to the Jefferson County district attorney’s office. District Attorney Danny Carr told them to take it to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, and the sheriff assigned Wendell Major, then a lieutenant, to investigate.
Attempts to reach Sharon Cook or the Leeds Police Department dispatcher who handed her the original report have been unsuccessful. Cook, Meadows and their attorneys still don’t know why the document was released.
What is known, however, is that when the DA’s office subpoenaed the Leeds Police Department and the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk for all of its records related to the case, they had no record of the first report.
Under subpoena, the DA's office also received laboratory studies that weren’t presented at trial.
The studies confirmed that hairs found on the victim’s clothing didn’t belong to either Cook or Meadows.
With the help of Leroy Maxwell, a post-conviction attorney in Birmingham, the men filed a petition for a retrial based on the new evidence.
Officer is ‘concerned that the County was not including his reports’
At a hearing on Oct. 12, Terry Miller, the officer who made the original report, testified that he had been concerned that prosecutors were not “including his reports in the County Investigative Files,” according to court documents.
Years after he filed that report, Miller left the Leeds Police Department and joined the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, where he was supervised by Major.
Major estimates that sometime in the mid-2010s, Miller told Major he was concerned that some of his previous police reports weren’t included in investigative files. At the time, Major said he didn’t know the importance of that statement.
“It was not until I investigated this case that I could understand why Miller had those concerns,” Major said in a recent phone interview. Major is now chief of police of Tarrant, another Birmingham suburb.
Conviction overturned: 'So much joy'
Owens, the Jefferson County judge, vacated and “set aside” Cook and Meadows’ convictions on Oct. 25 due to wrongful conviction. Essentially, Owens granted their petition for a retrial but said the state doesn’t intend to try them again.
Owens also found that the state violated Cook and Meadows’ constitutional rights by not turning over all exculpatory evidence to the defense.
Inside the same courthouse where their mother fainted nearly 30 years ago, Cook looked at her again, rejoicing, crying tears of joy.
“I just broke down,” Cook said. “They had to bring me a handkerchief.”
Maxwell, the attorney, said that they are going to request compensation for the men’s wrongful convictions, which would pay the men $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated. The may also seek a civil rights lawsuit against prosecutors for allegedly withholding evidence, Maxwell said.
Cook, 50, and Meadows, 48, don’t spend time complaining about the nightmare they lived out for 20 years. In fact, prison wasn’t all bad, they say.
“I can't tell you what God's plan is,” Cook said. “But what I think is that God knew that the life that I was living, and the way that I was raised, and being a dropout … I think that God had already knew the outcome of that type of situation.”
Now, Cook runs his own wrecking and towing service and is active in both of his kids’ lives, and Meadows runs a car-cleaning business and devotes much of his time to spreading Christianity.
And for Maxwell, it’s a reminder of why he continues to represent the convicted. There are far more cases like theirs than people realize, and wins can feel far and few between, so it’s important to remember these moments.
“They have so much joy about themselves, and I'm thankful that their family is still around to share in the joy,” Maxwell said."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
-----------------------------------------------------------
