Tim Cole

One Polaroid decided this case. About two weeks after the March 1985 rape of Texas Tech student Michele Mallin, a detective photographed Cole near a pizza restaurant and put that picture in a six-photo lineup where the other five were mug shots. She picked it at once. Cole's brother and friends testified to an alibi. In 1995 Jerry Wayne Johnson, already imprisoned for similar attacks, wrote to prosecutors confessing; no one answered, and Cole died in 1999. DNA later excluded Cole and implicated Johnson, and Mallin joined the family in seeking his exoneration.

What the plaque says

Tim Cole Timothy Brian Cole, born in Brenham in 1960, served in the U.S. Army and attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock. While there, Cole was accused of assaulting a fellow student. In September 1986, a jury convicted him and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Prior to the trial, he was offered probation in exchange for a guilty plea, and while in prison, he was offered parole if he would admit guilt. He refused to take blame for a crime he did not commit. In December 1999, he died in prison at age 39 from complications from asthma. In 2007, the Innocence Project of Texas received a letter from an inmate confessing to the crime for which Cole was convicted. Physical evidence confirmed that this man was guilty and Cole was innocent. The crime victim joined Cole's family in the effort to clear his name. In District Court in Travis County, Cole's advocates successfully used a court of inquiry to obtain a hearing on his innocence. In April 2009, the court declared that Cole was innocent of the crime. Following this opinion and order of the court, the other two branches of state government also cleared Cole's name and record. In 2009, the 81st Texas Legislature enacted the Tim Cole Act, to compensate wrongly convicted individuals, and created the timothy cole advisory panel on wrongful convictions to reverse other wrongful imprisonments and prevent future miscarriages of justice. In March 2010, the Texas Governor's Ooffice issued the first posthumous pardon in state history. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836 - 2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.1 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.8 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 4.4 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 4.8 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Robert David Law — steps away
• Mount Olivet Cemetery — steps away
• Amon Carter Riverside High School and Riverside ISD — 1.1 mi
• Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom — 1.2 mi