It must gall the shit out of Govenor Rick Perry that he has to hear this bullshit about posthumous pardons of innocent inmates. I mean afterall doesn't the Texas Attorney General have anything better to do than to stir the pot?
The Dallas Morning News has this report about the case of Timothy Cole who went to prison in Texas and died there for a crime he didn't commit. Cole's family wants their loved-one pardoned posthumously and the Govenor says he won't even think about it because of a 45 year old opinion from the AG's office. Now the current AG Abbott, says that the law has evolved (even in Texas?!)
This is from Christy Hope's excellent look at the controversy:
"Cole was the first person in Texas exonerated by DNA evidence posthumously. A state court judge, looking DNA evidence and another inmate’s confession, found conclusively that Cole did not commit the 1985 rape for which he was convicted. He was a student in Lubbock at the time. Cole, who grew up in Fort Worth where most of his family still lives, died of asthma in prison in 1999.
'It’s the final hurdle in a marathon race that we’ve been in for a quarter century to clear Tim’s name,' his brother Cory Sessions said. His family, with the court’s ruling of innocence, was already eligible for state recompense, which amounts to just over $1 million based on his 13 years of wrongful incarceration. Sessions said that the family hasn’t put in a claim for the money yet because there was still work to be done. 'That’s not what we were after,' he said. In letters Cole wrote to family members from prison, he repeated that he wanted three things: vindication, exoneration and a full pardon. 'Tim’s name was soiled by the state and we want it cleaned by the state,' Sessions said."
And Govenor Perry won't do it. Consistent. Consistently a shithead.
Another version of the story is at USA Today.
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