Texas man wrongfully convicted of rape receives a posthumous exoneration, statue erected in his honor
A Texas man who was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 rape will be honored with statue in the town.
Timothy Brian Cole was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being identified in a lineup by Texas Tech University rape victim Michele Mallin. He died 13 yeas into his sentence, but maintained his innocence til the very end.
In 2009, more than 15 years after the true assailant initially confessed to the crime, Cole became the first man in Texas history to be exonerated posthumously. The state also passed the Timothy Cole Act to provide wrongfully convicted people with $80,000 for each year of their incarceration plus reentry services.
And now the city of Lubbock, Tex., is going even further this fall: In a state that is first in the nation for the number and pace of its death penalty executions, the city will unveil a life-sized bronze statue of Tim Cole and rededicate a park in his memory, establishing perhaps the first public memorial in the United States to a wrongfully convicted man.
It was most important that the city of Lubbock do something,” says Cole’s youngest brother, Cory Session, by phone. “In 2008 when the DNA test first came back, a reporter asked my mom, How much was she was going to sue for? What do you want?”
“And she said, I want them never to forget,” Session says. The town also established a scholarship in Cole’s honor for future law students.
Well done Cole family.
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