Governor Rick Perry appears ready to pardon Tim Cole, who died in prison in 1999; he was wrongly convicted of the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech student. His innocence was proved by a 2008 DNA test that exonerated him and implicated a convicted rapist who sent several letters confessing the crime to the court starting in 1995.

Those letters were ignored until the DNA evidence conclusively proved Cole was innocent of course by then he had died at age 39 of complication of asthma. Cole’s case lay fallow until his mother received a letter of confession from the other man at her home, and went to the Texas Innocence Project for action.

Cole, a black Army veteran, always maintained his innocence, and his family has filed lawsuits against a Texas Tech police officer and four Lubbock police officers, including the undercover officer, a woman, who they say acted improperly.

Last year, Perry signed into law the Tim Cole Act, which made Texas the most generous state in compensating the wrongly convicted. It went from paying the wrongly convicted $50,000 for each year of incarceration to $80,000 per year, plus a lifetime $80,000 annuity that varies based on life expectancy and other factors.

Cole's family is eligible to collect the lump sum, but has not filed a claim.