Hope Deferred: Tim Cole's family gets DNA report proving what they always knew; 6/30/2008
LUBBOCK ONLINE - Ruby told Tim all about the letter. A man named Jerry Wayne Johnson was promising to confess to the rape that kept her eldest son behind bars for 13 years. There was a lot of work still to do, Ruby told her son. They'd have to prove Johnson's claims, somehow, and no one knew if that was possible. But there was hope enough for the 71-year-old woman. Eight years had passed since prison dust and Tim's asthma killed him. For the first time since his death, his family really believed there was a chance to clear his name.
LUBBOCK ONLINE - Jerry Wayne Johnson was a scumbag. A jury convicted him of raping a 15-year-old abducted from her high school at knife point. Another would convict him for tying up and raping another woman in a cotton field. He was long a suspect in the murder of an insurance saleswoman. The lifelong eastside Lubbock resident didn't find any sympathy from jurors when the cases worked their way through the court system in 1987.
Hope Deferred: Search for a Lubbock rapist sends family on nightmare journey; 6/28/2008 LUBBOCK ONLINE - Reggie Kennard sat at his mother's side on the couch, wiping his face beneath two portraits of his oldest brother. The family had waited more than 20 painful years for any good news they could share with Tim, and filled the living room of his childhood home to hear the results of their latest, last hope. Reggie picked up a brown, palm-sized Bible and thumbed to a verse in Proverbs. Friends and family gathered in the southeast Fort Worth home listened silently as his voice caught. "Hope deferred," Reggie read through fresh tears, "makes the heart sick." Editorial: Watchdog needed for criminal justice; 6/14/2008 SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS: Innocent people are locked up in Texas prisons for violent crimes they did not commit. We know this for a fact. We know it because since 1994, DNA evidence has overturned the wrongful convictions of 33 Texans. They served a combined 427 years behind bars instead of the criminals who committed rape and murder. James Lee Woodard is the latest citizen to be exonerated by DNA evidence. In April, he left prison after serving 27 years for a rape and murder perpetrated by someone else. DALLAS MORNING NEWS: A month after a handful of Dallas exonerees traveled to the state Capitol to tell their stories of wrongful conviction, the state's highest criminal court announced the establishment of a task force to address problems within the criminal justice system. The new Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit is "good for Texas," said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. "It's putting policy aside and looking at the criminal justice system.