Archive for the 'Texas' Category
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends clemency for Tim Cole
February 28, 2010Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
BYLINE: MITCH MITCHELL; mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com
Texas
More than a decade after his death and nearly 25 years since his arrest, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is recommending clemency for a Fort Worth man who died in prison after being wrongfully convicted on rape charges.
The board sent a letter to Tim Cole’s attorney at the Innocence Project of Texas on Friday saying that it had voted to recommend clemency and forwarded its decision to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature.
It would be the state’s first posthumous pardon, and Perry has indicated that he would sign an order clearing Cole’s name if recommended by the board.
“Gov. Perry looks forward to pardoning Tim Cole pending the receipt of a positive recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles,” Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Saturday.
Cory Session, who has been fighting to clear his brother’s name for years, said he anticipates that the governor will sign Cole’s pardon in March during a ceremony in Fort Worth.
“To say that the wheels of justice turn slowly would be an understatement,” Session said Saturday.
“The question is: How many more Tim Coles are out there?”
As a Texas Tech University student, Cole became the target of a serial rape investigation in Lubbock.
While Cole maintained his innocence, in 1985 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He died in 1999, at age 39, from complications of asthma.
Jerry Wayne Johnson, serving life in prison for a series of rapes, was linked to Cole’s case by DNA testing in 2008, but only after writing letters for years, while Cole was still alive, to Lubbock County prosecutors and judges confessing to the crime. Johnson’s letters were ignored.
The Innocence Project pressed for the DNA tests after Johnson mailed a confession to Cole’s family in 2007.
State District Judge Charlie Baird in Austin pronounced Cole not guilty during an exoneration hearing last year, saying he had “suffered the greatest miscarriage of justice imaginable in our criminal justice system.”
His brother’s ordeal has lead Session to become an advocate for criminal justice reform in Austin and Washington, D.C. Session said organizations he works with estimate that 2 to 5 percent of people convicted in Texas have been convicted wrongfully.
At the end of fiscal 2007, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported that about 750,000 people — 1 in every 22 Texans — were in prison or jail or on parole or probation.
“I hope that it makes people understand that just because someone comes into your court underfunded and underrepresented, it does not necessarily mean that they are guilty,” Session said. “And I hope that it never takes another family this long to clear the name of an innocent family member.”
Last year, the Texas Legislature passed the Tim Cole Act, increasing the lump sum compensation to victims of wrongful imprisonment from $50,000 to $80,000 for each year of imprisonment.
Cole’s family is eligible but has not filed a claim.
“Most of the time, every one of these cases signifies that the system has gone wrong badly and that somewhere in this state there’s some guilty guy wondering around committing more crimes,” said Jeff lackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project.
“That’s a point that I wish most prosecutors and police would understand. The innocent should be freed, and the guilty should be caught and punished. It’s crazy that a group of overworked lawyers and wide-eyed law students should have to do that. The state should be doing this work.”
This report includes material from The Associated Press .
MITCH MITCHELL, 817 – 390-7752
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International Association for Property and Evidence
“Law Enforcement Serving the Needs of Law Enforcement“
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Pardon requested for Texas man who died in prison
February 16, 2010The Associated Press State & Local Wire
BYLINE: By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer
Dallas, TX
Attorneys for a man who died in prison after he was wrongly convicted of rape have filed for a pardon with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Tim Cole’s pardon application was mailed this week to Austin by The Innocence Project of Texas.
Cole, an Army veteran, died behind bars in 1999 at age 39. He was convicted of a 1985 rape of a Texas Tech student in Lubbock. 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.
Cole’s family has been asking for a pardon from Gov. Rick Perry, who was sympathetic but maintained he legally could not issue a posthumous pardon. Last month, Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the Texas constitution limits pardon power only in cases of treason or impeachment.
The pardons board will make a recommendation to Perry, who then will decide whether to issue the pardon. Perry has indicated he will do so.
Last year, Perry signed into law the Tim Cole Act, which made Texas the most generous state in compensating the wrongly convicted. It went from paying the wrongly convicted $50,000 for each year of incarceration to $80,000 per year, plus a lifetime $80,000 annuity that varies based on life expectancy and other factors.
Cole’s family is eligible to collect the lump sum, but has not filed a claim.
Cole is the first Texas man to be posthumously cleared by DNA testing. Last year, state district Judge Charles Baird in Austin pronounced Cole innocent during an exoneration hearing. Baird said mistaken witness identification, questionable suspect lineups and a faulty police investigation led to Cole’s wrongful conviction. Lubbock Police Chief Dale Holton has acknowledged Cole’s innocence and supported the pardon application that was dated Monday.
As a Texas Tech University student, Cole became the target of the investigation of a serial rapist in Lubbock after asking out a female undercover officer who was posing as a student to attract the rapist.
He was sentenced to 25 years and maintained his innocence until his death from complications of asthma.
Johnson, who was serving life in prison for a series of other rapes, mailed a confession to Cole’s home address in 2007 not knowing Cole had been dead for eight years. Cole’s mother received the letter, and along with the Innocence Project of Texas, she pressed for DNA testing.
A 2008 test cleared Cole and linked Johnson to the rape. He wrote several confessions to Lubbock County prosecutors and judges beginning in 1995 when Cole was still alive. But his letters were ignored.
Johnson cannot be prosecuted for the rape that sent Cole to prison because the statute of limitations has expired.
The Cole case is now the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by his family. It specifically seeks discovery from a Texas Tech police officer and four Lubbock police officers, including the undercover officer.
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International Association for Property and Evidence
“Law Enforcement Serving the Needs of Law Enforcement“
www.IAPE.org
DNA ties former boyfriend to 2009 slaying
February 14, 2010mysanantonio.com
BYLINE: Eva Ruth Moravec — Express-News
Link to Article
One Photo
Alamo Heights, TX
Dana Clair Edwards
No sign of break-in found at Edwards’ apartment
The father of a woman strangled in an apartment near Alamo Heights in 2009 says he always suspected her ex-boyfriend played a role in her death, but it took DNA from a bloodied towel for San Antonio police to arrest him Saturday morning.
Jon Thomas Ford, 41, remains in Bexar County Jail on one count of murder in connection with the Jan. 1, 2009, death of Dana Clair Edwards, 32. Ford’s bail is set at $100,000.
“It really doesn’t bring closure. I think we’re a long way from being through,” said Darrell Edwards, who with his wife discovered their youngest child brutally murdered in her apartment about 24 hours after she was killed.
“We were very aware when we found our daughter’s body that our lives would change forever,” he said Sunday.
Edwards said he’d suspected Ford, who had dated Dana Clair Edwards for 21/2 years and was “absolutely” welcomed into the family, all along. He said Ford attended family dinners and parties, and even went on vacation with the Edwardses.
Ford secured a lawyer almost immediately after the slaying, the victim’s father said, and never made contact with the family again.
Ford and his parents attended the memorial service for the woman he’s charged with killing, said Edwards, who remembers shaking their hands in a receiving line.
But it wasn’t until Dec. 9 that investigators got a report on DNA pulled off a bloody towel that covered the slain woman’s head. Two days later, officials obtained a search warrant for Ford’s DNA, which was found to match evidence on the towel, officials said.
“There were no signs of him being violent when they were dating,” Edwards said, adding that the couple broke up in October 2008. “It was certainly not our thought that Thomas Ford could have done this, but as the facts have come out, we believe it.”
The Edwards family also believes Ford killed their daughter’s beloved Jack Russell terrier, Grit, which was found in Olmos Creek about a week after the slaying. Officials determined Grit died of blunt force trauma. A second dog, a rescued mutt named Toby, now lives with the Edwardses.
Edwards said he plans to attend the trial and will testify if called upon.
“When you lose your daughter, your fishing buddy, your best friend, you don’t like the loss,” he said. “You know that nothing’s ever going to replace (her) or make you feel better about it.”
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International Association for Property and Evidence
“Law Enforcement Serving the Needs of Law Enforcement“
www.IAPE.org