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Jul 1, 2008 5:00 pm US/Central
DNA Suggests Texas Man Was Innocent Of 1986 Rape
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
On Tuesday afternoon, Ruby Session and her family visited the gravesite of her son, Tim Cole, a man who spent 13 years in prison for a crime he said he did not commit.
Cole was convicted in 1986 of raping a woman at Texas Tech University. The victim picked Cole out of a lineup. Authorities showed her official mug shots of other suspects and a Polaroid picture of Cole. Physical evidence was not used in the trial. He was offered probation for admittance of guilt, but he refused.
Cole died in prison in 1999 after serving 13 years of a 25 year sentence.
"He would respond as saying, one day it'll all come out," said Cory Session, the inmate's brother. "But we never knew it would come out after his death."
Now, after more than 20 years, the Fort Worth family is one step closer to clearing the name of a loved one. DNA evidence suggests that Cole was not the Texas Tech Rapist.
The family of Cole never lost faith and, with a little help from the Innocence Project of Texas, had evidence from the crime scene tested at a lab. The DNA on that evidence matched that of Jerry Johnson, a convicted rapist who admitted to the Texas Tech rape.
Ruby Session wants her son to be vindicated and exonerated. "I'm waiting to go to Austin," she said. "That is utmost in my mind, to get that piece of paper from the Governor stating what my child longed for."
The Session family also wants state laws to change. Reginald Kennard is the inmate's brother. "There will be a system in place," he said. "Some checks and balances or something, where overzealous detectives or District Attorneys looking for notches in their belt won't be able to go loose-handed and do what they want to do."
"What they did, in my opinion, was criminal," Kennard continued. "They were grand-standing. They were trying on their own to make themselves look good."
"We should use history as a way of trying to make sure we don't make those kinds of same mistakes in the future," said District Judge Jim Bob Darnell. He was the Lubbock County District Attorney in 1986, when the case was being prosecuted.
Darnell says it's regrettable that DNA technology was not available when the case went to trial. "I wish we had had the ability to do it 20 some years ago," he said. "And that we wouldn't have been talking about it."
The current Lubbock County District Attorney will now determine if Cole's case should be reopened.
If Cole is found innocent of the rape, it will be the first time that a man in Texas will be exonerated after his death.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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