LUBBOCK – This week Democratic gubernatorial candidate Senator Wendy Davis addressed a crowd of hundreds gathered to honor Tim Cole’s legacy of fighting for justice at the unveiling ceremony of a statue made in his image.
“I believe we have a responsibility to make sure that Tim Cole’s life serves as an educating moment because it gives us the power to change things. It gives us the security of knowing that our sons and daughters can live in a state that’s not as presumptuous as it once was,” said Wendy Davis. It charges us to stand by who we say we are on paper – a people who uphold the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, ever pushing to perfect our system but ultimately knowing that the true test of justice and fairness and freedom lies somewhere within our hearts.”
The Tim Cole Memorial Statue at Texas Tech University is dedicated to the first Texan posthumously exonerated after a wrongful conviction of rape. Tim Cole died in prison of an asthma attack in 1999, 13 years into a 25 year sentence, but his family never stopped fighting to prove the former Texas Tech student and Army veteran was wrongly accused and convicted.
The Innocence Project began to examine the case years after his death and worked with Cole’s family to clear his name with DNA evidence in 2009.
Tim’s mother Ruby Cole Session fought to pass the Timothy Cole Act which increased compensation and provides a college education for wrongfully convicted persons. She pushed for the creation of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, championed the reform of the eyewitness identification system that failed her son, and increased access to the DNA testing that exonerated him.
In 2009 the Texas Legislature took heed of Mrs. Session and passed two bills in honor of her son. Senator Davis was among the legislators who voted to pass the Timothy Cole Act.
