Tim Cole: Innocent man dies in prison

by Jeff Falcon

Tim Cole was sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges that he raped a Texas Tech student in 1985, but DNA from the crime scene showed last year that a convicted rapist, not Cole, had committed the crime. The vindication is bittersweet: Cole died in prison in 1999. He was 38 years old.

Cole had always maintained he didn't do it, and refused to accept a plea bargain that could have got him out of prison sooner. "I have his name back. I just have to wait for the Governor, and I know he'll be calling," Cole's mother Ruby Cole Session said. "But I'm so happy." To get to that joy, Cole's family and victim Michele Mallin had to endure an apology from the man who admitted to the crime, Jerry Wayne Johnson. "I'm truly sorry for my pathetic behavior and selfishness," Johnson said.

Ruby Cole Session and her family. Johnson is currently in prison for other sexual assaults.

After he read a letter explaining how he tried to confess after the statute of limitations on Mallin's rape ran out, Mallin said what she wished she could have said to Johnson 28 years ago.

"You did all of this," Mallin said. "You are the reason this is all happening today. And I want to make that very clear to you, because I wasn't able to say that on March 25, 1985. And I want to make it crystal clear that I am the one in charge today, not you."

It would be better if nobody was in charge, if authorities facilitate the murder of innocent people like Tim Cole. Following the exoneration of a man who died in prison for a crime the court determined he did not commit, lawmakers in Texas are proposing changes in criminal investigation procedures aimed at eliminating false identification of crime suspects.

Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis of Houston has introduced criminal justice reform bills that would prevent police from improperly influencing witness choices in lineups of suspects.

Johnson, the real rapist, claims he tried to convince Lubbock authorities that he was the real perpetrator of the crime and that Cole should go free, but that he was ignored.

When Michele Mallin faced Johnson in court, she berated him for allowing an innocent man to die in prison for a crime he committed.

"No man, no person, deserves what that young man got," said Mallin.

Mallin had been the main witness against Cole, but she says she was manipulated by Lubbock police, who withheld evidence that would have proven Cole's innocence. She joined with Cole's family in asking for his exoneration and took advantage of the opportunity to chastise the man who she says devastated her more than two decades ago.

"I am just angry and I just wanted to say that to you. I just hope you live out your last miserable day in prison and just suffer the rest of your life," she said.

Tim Cole's family was assisted in the effort to clear his name by The Innocence Project of Texas, a non-profit group that uses DNA tests and other means in an effort to overturn wrongful convictions. Spokesmen for the group say 88 percent of the police departments in Texas lack clear eyewitness identification policies and that faulty eyewitness testimony was a factor in 82 percent of the cases in the state where prisoners have been set free by DNA tests that showed they were innocent.

» 02-08-2009      

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