Tim Cole died in a Texas prison after having been misidentified by a rape victim
Gov. Rick Perry and other dignitaries will attend a ceremony this week during which the city of Lubbock will unveil a statue of Tim Cole, a man who died in prison after having been wrongfully convicted of rape. Perry had granted Cole a posthumous pardon on March 2, 2010.
In 1985, Michelle Mallin was raped in her car at knifepoint. The Texas Tech student was shown a now discredited police photo lineup from which she identified Cole as her rapist. Cole was tried and convicted in 1986 and given a 25 year prison sentence. Cole died in prison during an asthma attack on December 2, 1999.
In 2008, DNA testing showed that Mallin’s rapist actually was Jerry Wayne Johnson, a convicted rapist. In 1995, four years before Cole’s death, Johnson started writing letters confessing it was he who had raped Mallin.
After granting the posthumous pardon, Gov. Perry signed a law named after Cole that provides exonerated former inmates with $80,000 for each year they wrongly spent in prison. In addition, college tuition will also be granted to each exonerated inmate. That is this nation’s most generous inmate compensation law.
Michelle Mallin has been devastated ever since learning that she had misidentified Cole as her rapist. Cole’s mother does not blame her and says Mallin has been as much a victim as her son.
New procedural guidelines have been established to prevent misidentifications from police photo lineups.
1 comment:
If a detective is going to fudge on a photo line up so that the victim picks the suspect that the detective believes committed the crime, what makes people think that the detective is going to follow new procedural guidelines?
Didn't they already swear to the veracity of the original photo line up?
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