IAPE Evidence Blog

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, EDITION1
BYLINE: CHRISTY HOPPE, Austin Bureau choppe@dallasnews.com

San Anto­nio, TX

SAN ANTONIO — Gov. Rick Perry signed a posthu­mous par­don Mon­day for a Fort Worth native who was wrongly con­victed of rape and died in state prison in 1999.

Tim Cole, 39, died of an asthma attack while serv­ing a 25-year sen­tence in the 1985 aggra­vated sex­ual assault of a Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity stu­dent. DNA test­ing and another inmate’s con­fes­sion later proved his innocence.

“I have been look­ing for­ward to the day I could tell Tim Cole’s mother that her son’s name has been cleared for a crime he did not com­mit,” Perry said Monday.

“The state of Texas can­not give back the time he spent in prison away from his loved ones, but today I was finally able to tell her we have cleared his name, and hope this brings a mea­sure of peace to his family.”

Cole is the first per­son in Texas exon­er­ated by DNA evi­dence posthumously.

A 2008 DNA test cleared Cole and impli­cated con­victed rapist Jerry Wayne John­son, who con­fessed in sev­eral let­ters to court offi­cials that date back to 1995.

He can­not be pros­e­cuted for the 1985 rape because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions has expired.

A state court judge found con­clu­sively last year that Cole did not com­mit the rape for which he was convicted.

Cole was a stu­dent in Lub­bock at the time of the rape and had always main­tained his innocence.

He came to the atten­tion of police inves­ti­gat­ing a string of attacks against women after flirt­ing with an under­cover offi­cer, and he was later iden­ti­fied by one of the victims.

His case became cham­pi­oned by the Inno­cence Project of Texas.

Most of Cole’s fam­ily still lives in the Fort Worth area.

“I am so happy,” Ruby Ses­sion, Cole’s mother, said from her home in Burleson. “I just know that Tim is up there smiling.”

The Texas Board of Par­dons and Paroles voted unan­i­mously to rec­om­mend the posthu­mous par­don for innocence.

Under state law, Perry had to wait for the board’s rec­om­men­da­tion before he could sign the pardon.“There was over­whelm­ing evi­dence. It was very clear that he was wrongly impris­oned,” Perry said after a cam­paign event in San Antonio.

He called Ses­sion to tell her the news.

“It was really awe­some,” the gov­er­nor said, adding that he and Ses­sion have formed a warm rela­tion­ship over the past year or so.

Cole’s fam­ily is eli­gi­ble for state rec­om­pense, which amounts to just over $1 mil­lion based on his 13 years of wrong­ful incarceration.

The Asso­ci­ated Press con­tributed to this report.

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