Timmothy Cole Case Study

On March 24th 1985 a young African-American man approached Michele Mallin at her car and asked her if she could help him start his car with jumper cables. Michele Mallin responded to him by telling him that she did not have any cables, the man then proceeded to unlock her door by reaching in through her car window. Mallin screamed and bit his thumb. He then took out a knife and held it to her throat to subdue her and to make her lay down on the floorboard of the car. He got in her car drove to a field just outside of town. He forced Mallin into oral sex and then vaginally raped her. After that he drove the car back to Lubbock where he left on foot.
 There was plenty of evidence that should have sealed Cole’s innocence. When Michele Mallin described the

The lab analyst testified that the hairs had similar characteristics to Cole's pubic hair. The testimonial from the lab analyst was prejudice and lacked any real scientific evidence and was therefore not valuable to the case.
 Timmothy Cole was convicted on September 9th of 1986. While serving time for the conviction he died in prison on December 2nd of 1999. Timmothy Cole was twenty-six years old at the time he when he was arrested for Aggravated Sexual Assault against Michele Mallin. Timothy Brian Cole died from complications from asthma while serving his time in the Texas prison and therefore was never released. He died without knowing that Jerry Wayne Johnson had been attempting for four years before his death to confess to the crime that had originally put him in jail. Jerry Wayne Johnson had been previously convicted of similar crimes and was serving a life sentence in a prison in Snyder, Texas. Even though the letters written by Jerry Wayne Johnson admitting guilt to the rape of Michele Mallin were not acknowledged by the supervising judge and the case was later rejected by a different judge the word eventually got out to Cole’s family and the Innocence Project of