” Timothy Cole’s family never stopped believing they would one day clear his name.
Not after he was convicted for the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech University student. Not after an asthma-induced heart attack killed him partially through his prison sentence 11 years ago. “He said, ‘I still believe in the justice system, even if the justice system doesn’t believe in me,’” Cole’s youngest brother Cory Session said. “He said that from behind bars.”
The decades-long fight Cole’s relatives waged finally ended Friday in a Fort Worth hotel as Texas Gov. Rick Perry presented them with the state’s first posthumous pardon and cleared Cole’s name.
“This is the day, and it is the day because the quest is over,” said Ruby Session, Cole’s mother. “
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/031910dnmetpardon.1c3fa92f3.html
God bless this innocent young man and his family. What a tragedy that he didn’t live to see this day. God bless his family for continuing the fight to clear his name, and thank God for DNA testing that is clearing the innocent and helping to prosecute the guilty.
“the state’s first posthumous pardon - a document that finally proves his innocence.”
Though this is commonly believed, it’s completely wrong. Burdick v. United States shows that a pardon carries an ‘imputation of guilt’, and accepting a pardon is ‘an admission of guilt’.