Timothy Cole
After being raped while held at knifepoint, Michele Mallin was able to identify Timothy Cole twice. The first time being a polaroid, where Timothy Cole was facing forward while the mugshots of the other photos were facing to the side; the second time she identified Cole was in a lineup. With absolute certainty on Mallin’s part, Mallin picked out Timothy Cole as her attacker and rapist in both instances.
In court, a forensic examiner presented Mallin’s rape kit data from the hospital post attack. From this test, they identified foreign pubic hairs on Mallin to be similar to that of Cole, yet no conducive evidence was able to confirm this accusation. Cole’s alibi consisted of him being at home studying, while his brother and friends
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His statute of limitations ran out in 1995, thus all appeals were later denied. Even after this, Jerry Johnson – the true perpetrator, wrote letters confessing of his crime while also in prison for a ninety-nine year sentence for sexual assault. Even with his letters of confession, judges made no attempt to look further into the case until the Innocence project got involved, and represented on Timothy Cole’s behalf on April 7, 2009. Governor Perry pardoned Cole on March 1, 2010.
As a result, the Timothy Cole act was pasted which increased exonerees’ compensation to increase to $80,000 per year served, while offering compensation to the exonerated family posthumously if exonerated after death. In addition, the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel was created to further study cases similar to Timothy Cole, consisting of wrongfully accused prisoners.
In 2014, a statue of Cole was erected near Texas Tech University Law School. His brother Corry said Cole “left Lubbock . . . with his head bowed down,” but now “he will forever be there standing tall” (Star-Telegram). As he faces the University he once attended, the base of the sculpture reads, “And Justice For All.” Although the Cole family received $1,060,000 in state compensation (National Registry), no amount of money can give back life. All we can do as a society is to improve so that nothing like what happens to Timothy Cole happens in the