#251 Jason Flom on Tim Cole

Tim resembled the composite sketch. A suggestive photo lineup lit to Tim's misidentification, arrest and sexual assault charges solely for the fifth attack in the series, when additional rape occurred the day after he was taken into custody. Further, the rapist had smoked during all of the attacks, while Tim, a chronic athmos sufferer, had never smoked. The judge refused to admit evidence that this attack was part of a series that was also connected to a man who was

then in custody. Without these exculpt tory details, Tim was convicted on the victims shaky testimony of quote, I think that's him. After the statute of limitations expired. The serial rapists confessed, but was ignored. DNA testing would eventually proved Tim's innocence, but not before complications from asthma tragically took his life. Were joined by his brother Corey and sister Karen, who shared their journey to posthumously exonerate Tim and restore

his honor. This is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. Today. You're going to hear a story that is unlike any we've ever told on this show. And I have to be honest, as I was reviewing the research on this case that I've known about for a long time this morning, I'm not a very emotional guy. It I was fighting

back to years and soon you'll understand why. But there's a lot of hope in this story too, and I hope that you'll take that away from this episode and from the extraordinary people that we have the privilege of having on the show with us Today, and without further ado, I'm going to introduce the brother and sister of the man who was wrongfly convicted. His name was Tim Cole. He's not with us anymore, but his brother and sister are very much alive and are absolute warriors for justice.

So Karen, we're going to introduce you first. Karen Kinnard is a shareholder in the government Law and Policy group of Greenbriog Sharing and she does quite a bit of pro bono innocence work. So Karen, welcome to Wrong for Conviction. Thank you. Jason's great to be here today. And we also have Tim Cole's brother here, Corey Session, who's vice president of the Innocence Project of Texas. Corey Um just super happy and honored to have you on the show today.

Thank you for having me. And during our time today we're going to get to the extraordinary work that each of you were doing and how much that would have meant to your brother. I only wish he was allowed to see it, honestly. And if we look back in time to back in, your brother, Tim Cole was in his mid twenties. He previously attended two years of college and then joined the Army, where he spent the next two years before going back to school in attending Texas

Tech and set to major political science. So first, before we go any further, can each of you just tell us a little about what your childhood was like and about your brother Tim's early life, your memories of him growing up, Karen, let's go to you first. Well, Tim was the oldest child in our family. We are a blended family, mother, stepfather, seven children, six boys, and I'm the only girl in that family. Wow. Uh, Tim's the oldest and I'm the second oldest. Memories of our families

that you know, it was a happy childhood. We were fortunate. We had two hardworking, loving parents who tried to do everything they could to give us what I call the normal childhood. We grew up on a street called Hellview Drive, and they were like two other families with seven kids on Heelview Drive and lots of other families with other kids. Tim was very well liked. He loved basketball. He took

being a big brother very seriously. He was very responsive and responsible for us, I think all of us when he first went off to college, remember receiving letters from him. He liked to write us letters, give us advice, check in on us, make sure we were on the right track. And those are some of the fondest memories I have of him, of him just being a guardian of us. Corey, I understand the that he was never in any sort of trouble right, so he would have seemed to be

for a number of reasons. He would have seemed to be one of the least likely people in the entire town, or maybe even the state, to have committed such a horrific crime. Is that bear to say? Absolutely? Tim was a quiet person. He was a peacemaker. I'll tell you one of the memories I have. I think I may have been six or seven years old, but I remember this vividly, and this will tell you the type person

Tim was. It's a summer night. We were outside in front of our house and there had been probably fifteen kids out there, and the topic people were talking about was what do you have to do to get to heaven? And they were going around the circle. Yeah, you gotta do this, you have to do that. Well, Tim was sitting at the edge of the driveway with his hands around his knees. Tim's nickname was Ears, and one of

the older kids said what do you think? And it was very quiet, and my brother Tim said three things, just do right and there was a pause. Then all of a sudden that was an uproar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. Leave it to Ears to make it simple and keep it simple, just do right. Yeah, I've never heard it said in such quiet, simple, sort of eloquent terms. But what a good thing to be known for, remembered by. And he lived it right. And he was not just

talking to talk. He was walking the walk, serving his country, serving his family. I would say, right, yeah, because he joined the army specifically to help our family. I mean we were seven kids and we were starting to have anywhere from three to four kids in college. He called me one night and said, you know, I'm doing this because I know I can get some college benefits. And he said, I want to help mother and my stepdad.

He was always about trying to figure out how to help us, how to help the family, how to help all of us. Yeah, he was serving his family, his community, and his country. And that brings us to the fall of through eighty five, when a rapist had been terrorized in the campus of Texas Tech and love it, having already victimized four women with the same m O each time. Right, The women had been taken from parking lots near your campus,

driven to desolate areas, and raped. Assailant usually smoked cigarettes during the assaults and then would flee on foot Now on March, the fifth abduction and rape involved a young student in Michelle Murray Mallon, just twenty years old at the time. Now, normally we do not mention sexual assault survivors and names here. However, Michelle is very vocal and open about her story. She was parking at a lot across from her dorm when a man approached asking for

help to jump start his car. When she told him that she would never be jumper cables, the man reached in through her window and unlocked the car door. Ms Mallon screamed and bit his thumb, but the man held a knife to her throat while he moved into the driver's seat and drove her to a vacant field outside of town, where he forced her to perform oral sex

and then raped her. He then drove the car back to Lubbock, where he took two dollars in cash, a ring, and a watch from miss Malin before leaving on foot, as he had done in all the other crimes. As Malin called the police to report the attack, a rape kit was done, and she helped investigators with a composite sketch. Now Tim once again was a student at Texas Tech at the time, but he was home on the night

of the attack studying. His brother was hosting a card game, So there were five different alibi witnesses, all of whom were there with Tim. I mean, this story obviously should have ended right there, but it didn't. So Corey, were you the one that was hosting the card game. I was not. I was still in high school. But my brother, Reggie was the one, who was also a Texas Tech

at that time, who was hosting a card game. Like you said, the atmosphere of Texas Tech, there's a rapist loops on Camp Appa's parents were withdrawing their children out of school because they couldn't catch this person. So the temperature was high. We've got to find someone. Tim had a car. One of their roommates worked at the Mr. Gatti's Pizza and his roommate called him to come pick him up, and he said, here, I'll go pick you up.

Mind you, this is daytime. He went down there to pick him up, I saw a young lady walking outside, paid no attention, went inside. His roommate came out and said, hey, yours, I'm not gonna be able to get off right away. Can you come back? He said yeah. Well, that time that young lady was sitting in the restaurant. Tim got up, walked back to his car, got in his car. That young lady was walking down the sidewalk and she had made eye contact with him while in the restaurant, and

she looked at him. So he let down his window and said, do you need a ride somewhere? And she said no, And he said are you sure and she said yes. He said, well here, he pulled out his driver's license. He said, my name is Tim Cole and he showed her his driver's license and then he went and pulled out his Texas Tech. I d said you're not to be afraid of me. I go to Texas Tech. And she said okay, and he said you sure you don't need anything? She said no, He said okay, and

he drove off. Well, that lady was a undercover police officer named Joanna Bagby, and she immediately reported to her supervisors that's him. And the supervisors says, how do you know that's him? She said, because he looks like the sketch. That was it. Now Tim had reported as wallet being stolen, and they had no picture of Tim and the system, so they found his name that he had reported, so

they knew his address. So they went to his address, knocked on the door and told him, hey, we may have a witness who knows who sow your wallet, but we need to make sure that you are the person. Can we get a picture of you? And he says sure, So they took a polaroid picture outside of his apartment, and that's the one that they put in the six pack. One polaroid and five other black and white photos. One polaroid. I just want to repeat that in five other black

and white photos. Let's just pause there for a second, shall we, Because this is one of those techniques that police use. It is highly suggested to make one photo stand out from the others. Other cases we've seen there was only one person in handcuffs, or again in another case, there was a single picture in a photo array that was circled with red like a red marker. So they took the photo, they put it in the lineup and Michelle vividly remembers being shown the spread and she pointed

at Tim and said, I think that's him. But the detective wrote near the photo, that's him, and that's what they ran with. Came back to his apartment there arrested Tim. Reggie's as he heard him, said, now, y'all got the wrong person. I haven't raped anybody, And the police took

him and he told Reggie called mother that night. My mom flew to Lubbock to bond him out of jail, took him back home to Fort Worth, and she got a phone call from the attorney she had retained, a gentleman by the name of Mike Brown, and he said, Missession, I was calling to see if you guys made it home. Okay. She said, yeah, we did. He said, well, I got some bad news. There's been another rape today. And she said, oh, Mike,

I'm sorry to hear that. He said, well, not only that, they picked out Tim again, and there was no way possible that he could have committed the rate right, He was either in police custody or in Fort Worth when that day's rape had occurred, but he was identified none the less. When it comes to eyewitness identification, the best type of eyewitness identification to perform is a double blind procedure, which is not done at that time, and it's still

not done in a lot of cases. Yeah, a double blind procedure is a very straightforward way of removing suggestion from the process, where the person administering the procedure will show the photos one at a time and not say anything, not make any suggestive comments. You simply say the person who committed the crime may or may not be in this live if that I'm about to show you, and then show the person the photos while keeping your mouth shut.

Because even a well meaning interview, if they have their own preconceived notion about who it is they're going to steer somebody. It could be subconsciously, and it might be something as subtle but still powerful as well. Keep trying, or you're doing a good job. I know how difficult is this for you, but maybe you want to take one more shot ahead. Anything like that can be the difference between life and death for somebody, and between getting the right or the wrong person or nobody at all.

And the research has been done has shown that simple changes like instituting double blinds drastically reduces the incidents as rompel identifications while not and this is critical, while not reducing the instances of correct identifications right, So it's like

there's literally only an upside here. When the Innocence Project was leading the charge to try to institute double blind ideas as policy across the country, and for your brother's sake, I wish this had been the policy back then, not to mention the fact that he was in police custody and therefore, I mean, he couldn't have been in two places at once. He could not have committed the sixth rape, and they knew that. You also want to remember, the

rapes happened before Tim got to Lubbock. The rapes have started happening in the fall of Tim didn't get the Lubbock until the spring semester started in mid January, and there were several of the victims who did not pick him out of any photo array or any of the live lineups. But the police, once that undercover officer said those words of that's him, became convinced that it was him. You can't be in two places at the same time.

Tim could not have been either in police custody or in transit to Fort Worth with your mom while also out there committing the sixth rape, just like he could not have committed the initial four rapes before even coming to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech or be at home studying during your brother, Reggie's card game while Michelle Allen

was raped. And I have to say I really feel for Reggie too, right because imagine what that would be like and how it must have impacted him, having known definitively that Tim was innocent because he was right there with him at the time. It drastically changed Reggie's life. He has felt responsible for a long time for everything that happened to him, and it took him over twenty five years, took him a lot of therapy to finally recognize that it wasn't his fault. He's doing fine now,

but it took him a long long time. So the investigation was a bad mockery of an investigation. I would say the description, of course, had some glaring errors in it as well. When I say that the victim who's white, and we know that cross racial identifications are the most error prone, they're less accurate than guessing. And yes, you heard me correctly, and that's been proven in study after study.

So she was white, and she described her attack her the police as a young African American man with bug eyes. Did your brother have bug eyes? Okay? And he was under six ft tall. The attacker, according to her initial description wearing a yellow shirt and sandals, how tall was Tim and did he own any kind of clothing such as that Tim stood six ft one in. The victim recounted that the person wore a yellow terry cloth shirt and she remembers it because she always hated terry cloth shirts.

They did collect a yellow shirt from my brother's possessions, however, it was not a terry cloth shirt. And she didn't give a lot of other details. I mean, the poor woman was obviously traumatized. But she did say, and this piece of the identification is unmistakable, right she said the perpetrator had smoked cigarettes throughout the attack. Now there's something about your brother where this should have, right now set off all kinds of warning signals. And Karen, what am

I talking about? Tim had asthma, He was born in asthmatic, had had problems with his asthma all his life, and did not smoke cigarettes. So even though the m O was consistent throughout and police had believed all along that the same person had committed all six rapes, Tim was arrested and charged with the aggravated sexual assault just of Ms. Mallen and none of the other rapes. Now here's something I'm struggling with. Considering the nature of these crimes. Tim

was offered a plea bargain with no prison time. Yes, the district attorney at that time, manned by the name of Jim Bob Darnell, the day before trial told him, you were facing twenty years in prison. We're gonna offer your probation. And Tim said, I'd rather spend twenty five years in prison before I ever admit to something I did not do. And Mr Darnell very smugly said, well, we aimed to make sure that happens if they believe that your brother was responsible for even one of these rapes.

This is a black man in Texas accused of raping a white woman. You think that they would have offered him probation. No, not a chance in how there is no way they would have offered him probation. And let me just say, unlike a lot of these cases, my parents hired a very good lawyer. We were fortunate in that there were resources to do that. He did a really good job of investigating, and so we knew there was a police officer from the university who had told

them that they had the wrong person. That Tim was not the person who had raped this young woman that the Texas Tech Police Department gave him the name of who they thought the person was. And mind you, also, when they arrested Tim, they announced in the media, the radio, print, electronic media, that they had caught the tech rapists. They just did not want to say, oops, sorry, Tim, we got the wrong person. The attorney, Mike Brown was very

confident that they were going to drop the charges. He'd be found innocent because they had actually arrested another guy who had committed rapes with the same m O. And other attorneys are like, oh, yeah, that'll take care of But they did not want to relinquish the fact that we got him and we're going to keep it. When that trial started, it was a media circus, and my mom brought some of the newspaper clippings and things home. Tech rapists, called tech rapists, all of these things. Now,

the trial begins in September. Remember this is before DNA testing, so they only had prology testing, in which you can determine blood types and whether or not the source of any bodily fluids as a secretor meaning the blood type can be identified in all bodily fluid is not just blood. So the forensic examiners for the state had examined the rape kit and had identified a Type A blood secretor

on the swab. However, the victim was a Type A secretor and Tim also had Type A blood, but his secretors status was unknown, so therefore the prology offered no meaningful conclusions at all. They also compared foreign pubic Harris collected from the victims to those from Tim and said that they had similar characteristics, but that they couldn't draw firm conclusions, so the biological evidence really offered very little

to work with. Corey. What else happened at trial? Michelle Malon went on the witness stand and was asked, do you see the man in the courtroom that you said raped you? She said, I think that's him and Tim, being an asthmatic that's brought up can't smoke. She never knew that Tim wasn't asthmatic and couldn't smoke. The bite that she put on the actual perpetrator's phone, there were no bike marks on Tim. I mean, this is a

woman who's literally fighting for her life. She didn't know whether she was going to survive this attack or not when she bit him, so she probably meant to take that finger clean off. How the hell would that not leave a mark? And you have to remember it was one week between when she was assaulted and when Tim was arrested. They didn't find any bite marks on him. So what about Tim's alibi witness testimony? Weren't there five

alibi witnesses at your brother Reggie's card game. There was a vigorous defense with all of the alibi witnesses who were very certain that Tim was there that night. They were saying, you know, he was the studious one. He didn't join in in the card game. They said he told him he had a test. When my brother Reggie testified, he was very certain and forceful that Tim did not do this. Tim was at home, and the prosecutor said he was being very brash, he'll say anything to protect

his brother. Well Reggie. When he got through testifying Mike Brown, the attorney grabbed him and took him outside and said, Reggie, I want you to listen to me very carefully. I want you to go down this hallway. I want you to go down the back steps all the way downstairs and go out the actor. My secretary is waiting for you.

She's going to take it to the airport. You're gonna get on the plane and you're not to come back to Love the love of Police were going to charge Reggie with one of the rapes of the Tech rapists, just for him defending my brother. Reggie remembers vividly tim telling him they got me, don't let him get you.

That is just fucking terrifying. Michelle. When we talked to her, she told my mother in a session, I remember this because the rape crisis counselor told me, you know, they're going to arrest his brother too for the other rapes. These people just don't give a shit about truth, justice or anything. And just when you thought this couldn't get any worse. That brings us to Jerry Wayne Johnson. It was a Perry Mason moment when my brother's attorney, Mike Brown,

said who the rapist was, Jerry Wayne Johnson. Mike Brown wanted to introduce evidence showing the similarities and all the other but the judge denied it. He denied every time he would try and bring those things up about Jerry Wayne. Jonathan then pret and to hold an attorney in contempt of court. The judge did not allow evidence that there was this string of other attacks where there was this m O of what the perpetrator was doing approaching victim's

own foot, smoking and all of the attacks. The judge didn't allow evidence of that into the trial. And if that evidence may have been admitted into the trial, that would have been stronger evidence in my brother's favor, in addition to the alibi evidence that he had absolutely not to mention if DNA testing had been available to do what it eventually did in this case. So, Karen, what

happened next? I mean, I can't imagine what all of this was like for you and your family, because Corey and I had a couple of the brothers still in school at that time. My dad stayed home with them so that they can continue school. So I was the only person who actually set through that one week trial. It was a one week trial, a full week and I call it the Week of Hell. Started that Monday morning and it went all the way through Friday. They

came back late Friday afternoon with that verdict. So you were there for the verdict. What was that moment, like, you know, took her breath away? They were out for a long time that day, and so we were hopeful because he had been offered probation, So we thought, maybe they'll bill hung jury, maybe they'll come back with not guilty. We knew that we had a good lawyer who had put on the best case he could with what the judge had allowed him to put into evidence, and that

Tim had been a good witness for himself. He was earnest, he was forthcoming, and we had laid it all on the table. But when that guilty verdict came back, it was a gut punch. I remember I was seventeen. I was a freshman at U T Austin, and I remember my mom calling me telling me they convicted Tim, and

I was like how. And that weekend we all came home except for Tim, and it was probably two am in the morning, and it was very quiet, except for my mother walking back and forth down the hallway, screaming, swinging her hands back and forth, talking to God, saying, why did you let them do this to him? You know, he's not guilty, Just back and forth, back and forth.

And I got up and woke my dad up, and he went to the hallway and he put his arm around her and he said, come on, Ruby, and he walked her to her side of the bed, and I was standing in the hallway just looking at her. She seemed to still be in this trance even when our grandmother passed away. When my dad passed away, I didn't see her and that much pain. And my mother always prayed from day one, let whoever did this, let them

come forward. And decade later her prayer came true. The day Tim was sentenced to five years, he was taken into custody and put in the sales in love A County, and there was a man across from him in another cell who heard Tim crying, I didn't do this, Why would you let this happen? Talking to God, and this man, who happened to be Gerry Wayne Johnson said at that point something in him told him one day he was

going to have to make it right. We believe him on that because jail records show he was in custody and he was in the same general area as to Tim, so he could have heard him. And then ten years later he actually writes letters to the judge, to the prosecutors, to our defense attorney admitting his guilt, and he would do whatever it took to clear Tim's name. It's extraordinary,

so Jerry Wayne Johnson. After the statute of limitations of his rape that expired, he wrote two judges and the prosecutor the lob A d A we mentioned before Jim Bob Darnell, as well as to Mike Brown, that he had committed the rape. Tim was convicted of Johnson by this time with serial life plus years sentence, after convictions for two of the other sexual assaults, which were almost identical in terms of characteristics to the one that Tim

was convicted of. So ultimately, even though one would think that they would admit their mistake now that the actual perpetrator was confessing, Johnson's letters were not even acknowledged me and while Tim remained in prison and was offered parole but only if he would admit to guilt. When he refused twice during his prison term, due to his extremely serious asthma condition, he was found unconscious in his self.

Tim was left to suffer with this condition in a place where the condition would only worsen and the symptoms would obviously be exacerbated due to the various deprivations of a Texas prison cell and Ultimately, after thirteen long years in prison, Tim's system just couldn't take it anymore, and on December two, he died in the Texas prison cell that he never should have set foot in in the

first place. I remember when it happened because it sent shock waves through the innocence community, and I remember feeling a sense of outrage that I had not I had not experienced that part picular emotion before, because it just struck me as so so freaking wrong. You know that I had heard of all sorts of wrongful convictions and all sorts of injustices, but this one, I think he had a lot of us really hard still does to this day. And the year after Tim died, Johnson wrote

again to a supervising judge. This time the case was moved to a different judge and rejected without comment, but eventually, in May two thousand seven, Johnson's most recent confession letter reached the Innocence Project of Texas and your family. At the Innocence Project, we receive hundreds of letters a month, but rarely do you receive a letter from someone admitting their guilt and wanting to exonerate another party. So the Innocence Project of Texas saw postumust DNA testing the case,

and Lubbock prosecutors this time cooperated. So how did all of this take place? A young man by the name of Elliott Blackburn, he was a government reporter with the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, took a call from me about a letter we had received and he said, I'm interested send it to me. And I said, just so you know, this letter is from the person who committed the rapes

and he was mentioned that trial. One week later, he wrote a story in the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, and the Reporter, as well as the Innocence Project very good attorney named Jeff Blackburn, pushed Matt Pyle, who was the then distric attorney at Lubbock, to do DNA testing, and the reporter caught him on a Saturday at a softball game for his son, and he quoted him as saying, we will do whatever it takes to prove Tim Cole's guilt or innocence.

And we hadn't heard anything for months, and Elliott the reporter called and said, Corey, I got some news and it's big. They got the DNA test back and they've been sitting on it for over a month. I called my mother and I said, mother, Eliot's on the phone. They got the DNA tests back, and he said, miss Session, the DNA excludes Tim and it matches Jerry Wayne Johnson.

And my mother said, well, now you all know when they said they found the rape kit and there was enough to test back in January of two thousand and eight, we actually celebrated then because we knew, so we were a little bit subdued when they're like, Okay, well now you know what I've always known. Get this the victim in this case. Michelle now and courageously speaks and writes about this case to raise awareness about misidentifications and wrongful convictions.

A direct quote from her, she said this at Georgetown University Law. I was positive at the time that it was him. I was shocked when I found out it wasn't him. I joined Tim's family and working to exonerate him because it was the right thing to do. Timothy didn't deserve what he got. End quote. Mic Drop. Wow, Michelle, so much respect for you. So Matt Piale, the district attorney,

was very much well, as far as I'm concerned, he's clear. No, no, no. My mother said I want his good name back for the animals of Texas history to show that Tim Cole was innocent. So Jeff Blackburn requested a hearing in Lubbock, knowing full well they would deny it because no deceased

person had ever had a exoneration hearing in Texas. And Jeff Blackburn had used his expertise and knowledge of the Texas Constitution and statutes to use a little known procedure called a courte of inquiry, which allows you to seek redress in any county in the state of Texas, regardless of your conviction, if you can show just calls that you were wrong. And in the two District Court in Travis County, Judge Air agreed to have a hearing and we requested that Jerry Wayne Johnson b bench warned to

the hearing. So during a two day hearing in February two thousand nine, Johnson again confessed to the climb, this time before a judge, before your family, and before the victim. It was very surreal. I taking my brother's A couple

of them were real angry. So there were quite a few bailiffs in the courtroom, so there were gonna be some disorder in the court, and I remember my brother Kevin was sitting literally on my brother Sean because Sean went into the military, because Tim went into the military, and he was going to jump over the bar, and so he had the whole sewn down because he was visibly shaken and emotional. But as my mother said, if I'm not angry, no one can be angry, and no

one can be angry for me. She knew that Tim had a greater purpose, and the greater purpose became clear, and I one of course mentioned the Innocence Project of New York joined with the Innocence Projects of Texas co counsel on the case. And let me just say that the Innocence Project of New York found the letter that Tim wrote to them in asking for assistance and returned

that letter to my mother. Barrischeck, I can't say enough about him, took time out, came and co counseled on Tim because it was so important that we have finally proven in these United States that the innocent due in fact I in prison. But Tim, and many of his letters to us and to my mother, he always said I want three things, vindication, exoneration, and a full pardon.

The vindication came with the DNA testing. The exoneration came through the District Court, who Judge Baard said he was factually and morally innocent and this was the worst misca arriage of justice he had ever seen in his entire life. And then on March on, Texas Governor Rick Perry pardoned your brother his third wish. And then soon after that, the State of Texas passed the Timothy Cole Act, increasing compensation paid to axonorees after their release and adding compensation

for the family of an axonoree cleared after death. Thank you to Rodney Ellis, who was a chair of the board of the Innocence Project of New York, who was instrumental in getting that passed. The state also created the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Rawful Convictions in two thousand

nine to study the prevention of rawful convictions across the stating. Ultimately, a thirteen foot bronze statue of Tim in two thousand fourteen was dedicated in Lubbock, depicting young Tim looking towards Texas Tech University Law School, where he almost certainly would have graduated and gone on to do probably incredible things and in his hands on the statue or two books, the binding of one says lest we Forget, and base

of the sculpture reads and Justice for All. Wow. And Texas Tech University System regents voted in two thousand fifteen to posthumously award him an honorary degree in law and social Justice. What an incredible ending to the story. Before we get to the closing of the show, is there a call to action for the audience? Is there's something that you'd like them to donate to our website you'd like to go to. All of our work is focused on the Texas Innocence Project, So the incarcerated innocence they

need all the help they can get. There are more of them than there are people to help them. So anything you can do, anything you feel called to do, to give to the Texas Innocence Project is greatly appreciated. Our family's mission is to continue to work on legislation through the Texas Innocence Project because there's still some things in the law that need to be changed. And that's Innocence Texas dot org. That's Innocent Texas dot Org. Will also put a link in our bio for people to

donate and get involved. So now, Karen and Corey, we have a tradition here at Wrong for Conviction, which is that the end of our show is called closing arguments. It works like this. I first of all, thank each of you, not just for being here today, but for just being such incredible fighters and courageous humans. I'm proud to know you and honor to have had you here today.

So thank you for that. And then I'm going to turn my microphone off, turn my volume on my headphones up just a little bit, kick back in my chair, and leave your mics on, and let's close out the show with any final thoughts you want to share. Who wants to go first? And then hand the mic off to your brother or sister, whoever it is, and then you can take us out into the sunset. Well, I'll go first, because my youngest brother is so eloquent, I'll

leave the final words for him. Thank you, Jason for having us today and for continuing to elevate these issues. I'm happy to be here to represent my brother and our family and to present our story of his case.

But more than anything, I'm happy here to just let people know that we as a family stand on the shoulders of my brother and my mother, two wonderful people who were given circumstances beyond their control but made the best of those circumstances, and I think have made a difference not just in the state of Texas, but in the nation in the criminal justice system. And so my final words to the listeners here today is that we still do have one of the best criminal justice systems,

but it's just flawed. And that's okay. So I asked each your listeners to take a moment and think about what is it you can do to make the system better, because there's always something that each of us can do to make it just a little better. When Tim was in prison, he received back pay from the army for some fourteen thousand dollars. It was all deposited into his

inmate trust fund. And when his belongings came from prison after he had died, there was just a little box and there was a check from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division, and it was for only thirty six dollars and some change. And some of my siblings were like, what in the world happened to all his money? What happened? And I remember a couple of days had

gone by. My mother had organized all of his letters, and I was at our house and I remember her yelling Corey, Corey, come here, come here and rent room. I said, what is it? And she was throwing some papers across her bed, and she said, he gave it away, My baby gave it all away. And there were receipts from the Catholic charities feed the children. He gave the bulk of his money to those in need. He knew he couldn't help himself, but he still had the power

to help others. There are many people like Tim who are still in prison waiting to be cleared. In Texas, there are some plus prisons, more than sixty tho inmates. The Texas Prosecutor County Day's Association, they say that the amount of innocent people in prison is as high as ten That's a lot of people. We have only scratched the surface. My mother, when she found out that the statue was going to be up, a reporter said, Missession, how do you feel. Did you want to sue Lubbock

for this? And she said, what I want no man can give, and what I need is for them to never forget. So the Baton is on us to make sure people never forget. We want to make sure that this does not happen to another family, that another man, another woman does not go to prison after serving his country, after just doing right, and the entire judicial system turn its back on him because they need a conviction. So

we're thankful. We are grateful that he was cleared. But as my mom said, I never would have thought that on July one, nineteen six, that God would have chose me to be the vessel for change in the criminal justice system in Texas. My mother when she first met Michelle, the rape victim, Michelle was crying on the front steps of my house, and my mother told her stop crying. You have nothing to be sorry for. You were a

victim just as tim as they was. And Michelle admired some heartshaped ear rings my mother had, and we had dinner at my house for about three hours there and it was like we were old friends. And when Michelle was leaving, my mother grabbed her arm and said give me a hand, and she put her heart shaped ear rings in Michelle's hand and she said, oh, miss Session,

I can't take this. She said, no, no, you give people their flowers while they're alive, so we will try and make sure we can give as many people their flowers in hopes of getting them exonerated, keeping them from going into the criminal justice system as best we can. Thank you for listening to Ron Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Claverne,

and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava

for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one