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[Sad] Texan who died in prison cleared of rape conviction

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Zion, Feb 8, 2009.

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Zion Member

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Texan who died in prison cleared of rape conviction

(CNN) -- A Texas district court judge Friday reversed the conviction of a man who died in prison nearly a decade ago, almost two decades into a prison sentence for a rape he swore he did not commit, CNN affiliate KXAN reported.
Timothy Cole died in prison while serving a sentence for a rape DNA tests show he did not commit.

Timothy Cole was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1985 rape of 20-year-old Michele Mallin. He maintained his innocence, but it was not confirmed by DNA until years after his 1999 death, when another inmate confessed to the rape.

In the courtroom of Judge Charlie Baird Friday afternoon, Mallin, now 44, faced Jerry Johnson, the man who confessed to the rape.

"What you did to me, you had no right to do," she told him angrily, according to Austin's KXAN. "You've got no right to do that to any woman. I am the one with the power now, buddy."

Cole's family also addressed Johnson.

"He'll never have the chance to have children," Cole's mother, Ruby Session, said. "I want you to know he was a fine young man."

Johnson has been in prison since 1985 on two convictions for aggravated sexual assault, according to the Texas Department of Corrections. He was given a life sentence for the rape of a 15-year-old girl, and a jury later tacked on a 99-year sentence for another rape, according to the Lubbock, Texas, Avalanche-Journal. He cannot be charged with the Mallin case, as the statute of limitations has expired.

Johnson also spoke Friday.

"I am responsible," he said. "I say I am truly sorry."

Then a student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Mallin was walking to her car, intending to move it to another parking lot, when a man approached her asking about jumper cables, she said. In a matter of seconds, he put her in a choke hold and held a knife to her neck. He forced himself into her car and drove her to the outskirts of town, where he raped her.

The next day, police investigators showed Mallin pictures of possible suspects. She chose a picture of Cole and said he was her attacker. She later identified him in a physical lineup, according to the Innocence Project of Texas.

"I was positive," she said. "I really thought it was him."

But there was one detail: Mallin told police her attacker was a smoker. "He was smoking the entire time."

Cole, who suffered from severe asthma, "was never a smoker," said his brother, Cory Session. "He took daily medications [for asthma] when he was younger."

"He was the sacrificial lamb. To them, my brother was the Tech rapist, there was no backtracking. It was the trial of the decade for Lubbock."

The "Tech rapist" attacked four women other than Mallin -- abducting them in parking lots near campus and driving them to a vacant location, where he would rape them and flee on foot, according to the Innocence Project of Texas. The rapist "terrorized" the Texas Tech campus in the mid-1980s, the organization said.

Cole, like Mallin, was a student at Texas Tech. He had finished two years of college previously and was returning to school after spending two years in the Army, his brother said.

But his dreams of getting married and having children never materialized. He was arrested and charged with Mallin's rape, declining a plea bargain offer that would have put him on probation. A jury convicted him and imposed a 25-year sentence.

That night, "he hugged my mother and he said, 'Mother, why these people lie on me, why they do this to me?'" Cole's brother Reggie Session recounted for the Avalanche-Journal, which published a three-part series on the case in June.

"He said, 'They know I ain't done nothing to that girl. I don't even know that girl. Why they do this to me, mother?' ... He cried in my mother's arms on the floor."

Later, while in prison, Cole rejected an offer of parole that would have required him to admit guilt. "His greatest wish was to be exonerated and completely vindicated," his mother, Ruby Session, told KXAN.

But the asthma that plagued Cole throughout his life brought about his death on December 2, 1999. The cause was determined to be heart complications due to his asthmatic condition. He was 39.

It was 2007 when a letter addressed to Cole arrived at his family's home, written by Johnson. Read the letter »

"You may recall my name from your 1986 rape trial in Lubbock," says the letter, dated May 11, 2007. "Your Lubbock attorney, Mike Brown, tried to show I committed the rape.

"I have been trying to locate you since 1995 to tell you I wish to confess I did in fact commit the rape Lubbock wrongly convicted you of. It is very possible that through a written confession from me and DNA testing, you can finally have your name cleared of the rape ... if this letter reaches you, please contact me by writing so that we can arrange to take the steps to get the process started. Whatever it takes, I will do it."

Johnson did not know Cole had died. In fact, according to the Avalanche-Journal, he had been writing to court officials for years to confess to the rape, but got nowhere.

Upon finding out that Cole was dead, Johnson wrote he "cried and felt double guilty, even though I know the system's at fault," according to the Avalanche-Journal.

"A day later, I am still bothered, terribly, by the death revelation. Because, not knowing Mr. Cole at all, I wonder if the wrongful incarceration contributed to his death."

The Innocence Project became involved after Cole's family received Johnson's letter. DNA tests confirmed that Johnson was Mallin's attacker. Now, Cole's family hopes the court hearing will be the final step in clearing his name.

Mallin is helping them. "I was very traumatized," she said. "I was scared for my life. I tried my hardest to remember what he looked like.
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"I'm trying to get his name cleared. It's the right thing to do."

Cory Session said, "We don't blame Michele. She's very gracious."
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/06/texas.exoneration/?iref=mpstoryview

#1 Zion, Feb 8, 2009

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More detailed...

Family Of Man Cleared By DNA Still Seeks Justice

The family of a man convicted of rape will be in an Austin, Texas, courtroom Thursday to try to clear his name — joined by the woman whose testimony helped imprison him.

In 1985, Timothy Cole was a student in Lubbock when he was arrested and accused of being the Texas Tech rapist. A string of coeds had been raped, and the young African-American man from Fort Worth, who'd never been in trouble with the law before, was convicted largely on the eyewitness account of one rape victim.

Nearly two decades later, a jailhouse confession by another man prompted new DNA testing in the case. Those tests proved that Cole was innocent, that he should be exonerated and released. But in this case, that proved impossible.

It was Sunday night, March 24, 1985, and Texas Tech sophomore Michele Mallin had just returned to her dorm room after a weekend visiting her relatives. It was getting late when she remembered that she needed to move her car to a legal parking spot.

"I thought, well, I'll just run over there and do that real quick — it was almost 10 o'clock. Then I'll come back and get ready for bed," Mallin says.

As she finished moving her car, a black man appeared and told her he was having car problems. Did she have any jumper cables?

"Then all of a sudden, he just opened the door of my car and forced himself in and then he put a knife to my throat at the same time," says Mallin, who is white. "He pushed me over into the passenger seat and started to drive away and stared telling me,' Stop screaming,' because I was screaming my head off, 'or I'm going to kill you.'"

Mallin feared for her life as the man drove her out of Lubbock to a vacant lot. But she was strong, athletic, a virgin — and determined to stay that way.

"I just couldn't fight him," she says. "As much as I tried, I couldn't. He was just stronger than me physically."

Her attacker had one very distinguishing characteristic. "He smoked the whole time," she says she told authorities "from the get-go."

A chain-smoking, African-American rapist who used a knife. That was the man the Lubbock police should have been looking for. But it was a nonsmoking, asthmatic black man they eventually settled on.

No Physical Evidence

Cole had enrolled at Texas Tech for the 1985 spring semester. One of his friends worked at a Mr. Gatti's pizza parlor near campus, and Cole would often wait for him there. The restaurant was just a few blocks from where Mallin was raped. The police took a Polaroid photograph of Cole and showed it to her.

"Yeah, I was pretty confident, I never really wavered," Mallin says. "I really honestly believed that they found the right guy and I had picked out the right guy." She says she assumed the police had other physical evidence.

But there were holes in the prosecution's case. No physical evidence tied Cole to the crime. Although the rapist drove the car extensively, Cole's fingerprints were not found in the vehicle. Cole also had a solid alibi: At the time of the rape, he was studying in his apartment while his brother was having a card party in the living room. Several young people testified at trial that Cole was in the apartment with them all evening.

The district attorney attacked Cole's witnesses as brash, slick liars who would say anything to save their friend. In the end, the jury believed Mallin, and Cole was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

As he sobbed in his jail cell crying out that he was innocent, another inmate, Jerry Wayne Johnson, was listening.

Johnson was in jail over charges that he had raped two women. One victim was a 15-year-old white girl he brazenly snatched right out of her high school. Johnson had held a knife to her throat as he drove her to a vacant lot outside of Lubbock. He also was a heavy smoker.

Johnson had been following Cole's trial closely, because he was the man who raped Mallin. In an interview with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Johnson describes listening to Cole's anguished cries that night.

"I just looked over and was just kinda looking at him. I didn't say nothing to him," he says.

The idea that it was Johnson who raped Mallin seemed to occur to everyone except Lubbock law enforcement. His name was brought up repeatedly during Cole's trial, but it had no effect on the jury.

A Confession That Came Too Late

After Cole was convicted, the real rapist quietly waited for the statute of limitations to run out. Then, in 1995, Johnson wrote a letter to the district court in Lubbock in which he confessed to raping Mallin. He got no reply. So he wrote another letter asking for an attorney so that he could legally confess. Again, he was ignored.

Johnson eventually wrote to the former Lubbock district attorney who prosecuted the case, Jim Bob Darnell, and asked for his help. There was only silence in reply. By 2007, Johnson, who was still in prison, tracked down what he thought was Cole's address. He assumed Cole was out on parole and mailed his confession.

Cole's mother, Ruby Session, opened the letter. "My son read it. I couldn't sit down, I couldn't eat. I couldn't walk. I wanted to go outside. I wanted to stay inside. I was beside myself," she says.

In the end, Johnson's confession came too late. In prison, Cole had struggled to get adequate medical treatment for his asthma. He was found unconscious in his cell twice and revived in hospital emergency rooms. Then on Dec. 2, 1999, Cole was again found unconscious. He died before the prison got him to the hospital. He was 39 years old.

With Johnson's letter in hand, Cole's family went to the media. In response, the Lubbock D.A.'s office announced it would run modern DNA tests. When the results came back, it was Jerry Wayne Johnson's DNA on the swabs in the rape kit, not Timothy Cole's.

The Innocence Project of Texas sought relief in court to clear Cole's name, but no judge in Lubbock would grant them a hearing. Darnell, the former district attorney who later became a local family court judge, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. However, he told the Lubbock paper that he regretted what happened to Cole.

'I'll Always Feel Guilty'

It took a state judge in Austin to review the facts and grant a hearing for relief, which begins Thursday. Although Lubbock law enforcement has declined to testify, Mallin will. She plans to take the stand and ask that Cole be exonerated in death.

"I still feel guilty. I'll always feel guilty about it because, I mean, my testimony sent a man to prison and he ended up dying there," Mallin says. "Even though I know I did everything I could in my heart of hearts to do the right thing, still that happened. But I know the police are responsible and the D.A., too, because they knew things I didn't know."

So far this decade, 34 men in Texas, most of them black, have been exonerated by modern DNA testing. They spent 10, 15, 20, even 27 years wrongly imprisoned for rape before being released. No such remedy is available for Cole, a bright, likeable young man who got along well with everyone and who, in the spring of 1985, had his whole life ahead of him.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100249923

#2 Zion, Feb 8, 2009
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All black men look alike?

This is very sad. I wish I could find a picture of Johnson so I could see how she could mistake another person for him.

#3 juicystream, Feb 8, 2009
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This ticks me off. Just terrible.

#4 A_3PO, Feb 8, 2009
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Wow...I feel terrible for the guy.

#5 desi tmac91, Feb 8, 2009
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cant the family sue the *** out of that b**** who lied. god damn this pisses me off. just ****ing awful

#6 astros148, Feb 8, 2009
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astros148 said:

cant the family sue the *** out of that b**** who lied. god damn this pisses me off. just ****ing awful
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This is a sad case but I don't think the woman lied. I think she honestly believed this was the man.

#7 halfbreed, Feb 8, 2009

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astros148 said:

cant the family sue the *** out of that b**** who lied. god damn this pisses me off. just ****ing awful
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It wasn't completely her fault. She didn't lie. It was the court system that failed. She stated he smoked the entire time, but yet they convicted a guy with severe asthma. You don't throw someone in prison for a single piece of substantial evidence.

#8 Space Ghost, Feb 8, 2009
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halfbreed said:

This is a sad case but I don't think the woman lied. I think she honestly believed this was the man.
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agree, now she has to go through life being the victim of a vicious rape and putting the wrong person in prison, and that person dying.

i'm sure she has a few issues now

#9 pgabriel, Feb 8, 2009
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astros148 said:

cant the family sue the *** out of that b**** who lied. god damn this pisses me off. just ****ing awful
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I don't put it all on her. It was dark and its a traumatic event. Its still messed up, but I don't blame her.

The courts had all the evidence to clear the guy and didn't. The prosecutors or someone should take the fall on this one. Hopefully, justice will be served.

#10 Wakko67, Feb 8, 2009
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Damn it man, this story is terrible. I blame the incompetent officials that simply ignored the evidence and rushed to a decision, and then ignored the man's confession letters. These people should be fired and stripped of their authority.

#11 TheRealist137, Feb 8, 2009
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what a shame, the Texas penal system has a lot of work to do.

So far this decade, 34 men in Texas, most of them black, have been exonerated by modern DNA testing. They spent 10, 15, 20, even 27 years wrongly imprisoned for rape before being released. No such remedy is available for Cole, a bright, likeable young man who got along well with everyone and who, in the spring of 1985, had his whole life ahead of him.
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#12 across110thstreet, Feb 8, 2009
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TheRealist137 said:

Damn it man, this story is terrible. I blame the incompetent officials that simply ignored the evidence and rushed to a decision, and then ignored the man's confession letters. These people should be fired and stripped of their authority.
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That's the person they should have interviewed for this story. And the jury that convicted him despite all the evidence to the contrary. It seems like the alibi from multiple people as well as the inability to smoke would be more than enough to create "reasonable doubt".

#13 Major, Feb 8, 2009

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Major said:

That's the person they should have interviewed for this story. And the jury that convicted him despite all the evidence to the contrary. It seems like the alibi from multiple people as well as the inability to smoke would be more than enough to create "reasonable doubt".
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Concur. Add in the fact that they just arrested a chain-smoking, knife-wielding rapist who fit the description about the same time.

This type of incompetence should not go without major punishment.

#14 Wakko67, Feb 8, 2009
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One of the biggest things I've learned in law school:

Eyewitnesses are probably the WORST evidence you can have as far as reliability/truth...but the BEST evidence you can have as far as getting a jury to believe your side.

Don't ever trust the police if you could potentially be charged with a crime. Don't tell them anything. Don't cooperate until you've got a lawyer.

#15 SirCharlesFan, Feb 8, 2009
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SirCharlesFan said:

One of the biggest things I've learned in law school:

Eyewitnesses are probably the WORST evidence you can have as far as reliability/truth...but the BEST evidence you can have as far as getting a jury to believe your side.

Don't ever trust the police if you could potentially be charged with a crime. Don't tell them anything. Don't cooperate until you've got a lawyer.
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I've heard this advice given several times before.. not to talk to police if you could be charged, etc.

But, if you don't, can't the prosecutor mention that you didn't cooperate to a jury? and won't that make you look bad?

And, like the BART policeman who shot that kid in the back in Oakland... he hasn't said anything to police, and the media has painted him guilty already.

#16 CHI, Feb 8, 2009
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CHI said:

I've heard this advice given several times before.. not to talk to police if you could be charged, etc.

But, if you don't, can't the prosecutor mention that you didn't cooperate to a jury? and won't that make you look bad?

And, like the BART policeman who shot that kid in the back in Oakland... he hasn't said anything to police, and the media has painted him guilty already.
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I said don't talk to the police until you have a lawyer.

#17 SirCharlesFan, Feb 8, 2009
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The Jury convicted the man on just the girls testimony? That girl needs to be send to prison or sued. She wanted justice, but didn't think of the consequences.

#18 Air Langhi, Feb 8, 2009

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Air Langhi said:

The Jury convicted the man on just the girls testimony? That girl needs to be send to prison or sued. She wanted justice, but didn't think of the consequences.
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She got raped, bro. You might want to point a finger at the judge, the jury or the defense attorney before sending the rape victim to jail. What if it was your sister we were talking about?

#19 bigtexxx, Feb 8, 2009
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bigtexxx said:

She got raped, bro. You might want to point a finger at the judge, the jury or the defense attorney before sending the rape victim to jail. What if it was your sister we were talking about?
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You also forgot the prosecution.

#20 halfbreed, Feb 8, 2009

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