Via Sen. Rodney Elllis' office.Press conference commemorating Tim Cole's birthday and requesting the Governor add a posthumous pardons constitutional amendment to the call for the special session
( AUSTIN )// Senator Ellis, Ruby and Cory Session, Tim Cole's mother and brother, will hold a press conference on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 2pm on the South Steps of the Capitol, to commemorate Tim Cole's birthday and urge Governor Perry to add a posthumous pardons constitutional amendment to the call for the special session.
WHO: Sen. Rodney Ellis, and Cory and Ruby Session, brother and mother of Tim Cole, who was posthumously exonerated in 2009
WHAT: Press conference commemorating Tim Cole's birthday and requesting the Governor add a posthumous pardons constitutional amendment to the call for the special session.
WHERE: South steps of the capitol
WHEN: July 1, 2009, 2pm
I realize Governor Perry wants to limit the "call" for the special session, but surely it would hurt nothing to add this constitutional amendment? All it would do is give him power to posthumously pardon Timothy Cole and others similarly situated (a procedure unavailable currently under the Texas Constitution). There's no constituency against the cause and it's hard to see what would be the downside.
UPDATE: Sen. Ellis opened the press conference by pointing out that the Governor had already added an item to the special session call related to toll roads that wasn't an emergency and said he should add the constitutional amendment, too. Ellis said his staff had researched the issue and he didn't believe a constitutional amendment was necessary for the Governor to give Cole a pardon, but if Perry was going to insist it was, he said, then it was up the Governor to add the issue to the call. Ellis said he would also ask Attorney General Greg Abbott to review a 1965 opinion by then-AG Waggoner Carr.
Cory Session, Tim Cole's brother, said Cole would have been 49 today. Noting that the press conference had been moved indoors because of rain, he said the raindrops were teardrops from heaven shed because his brother's case could still not be finally resolved. His family has not received an answer from the Governor so far, he said, why they didn't want to put the issue on the special session's call.
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7 comments:
He should also add a bill to require separate trials in capital cases, which is the issue he cited as the reason for his commutation of the death sentence of Kenneth Foster.
I have not seen any opposition to the separate trials issue. It only died in the Senate from lack of time. It was on the last intent calendar.
You going to take a cake too.
I hate to be ugly but RICK PERRY DOES NOT CARE ABOUT TIM COLE or any other exoneree! It's just the truth and there's no nice way to say it. Lip service ("we'll get this right") and a photo op with Tim's mother are all you are going to see and get.
Grits said: "There's no constituency against the cause and it's hard to see what would be the downside."
The downside, from the Gov's perspective, would be formally admitting that he had been wrong all along, and giving in to an inmate's family, because that is still what Tim Cole's family are in the minds of many. It's the "tuff on crime" stance and the only way to change it is to remove it.
A PARDON is not necessary for a person who has been Exonerated. A pardon is forgiveness for an offense. THERE WAS NO OFFENSE.
Tim Cole was posthumously exonerated "on the basis of actual innocence". Thus, his Right, and the Right of every Citizen to restitution for property taken by THE STATE OF TEXAS, via wrongful imprisonment, was not alienated under the color of statutory law known as "the Tim Cole Act".
Informed Citizen said...
A PARDON is not necessary for a person who has been Exonerated. A pardon is forgiveness for an offense. THERE WAS NO OFFENSE.
Tim Cole was posthumously exonerated "on the basis of actual innocence". Thus, his Right, and the Right of every Citizen to restitution for property taken by THE STATE OF TEXAS, via wrongful imprisonment, was not alienated under the color of statutory law known as "the Tim Cole Act".
7/02/2009 11:49:00 AM
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Whatever. Apparently you are the only person in Texas who understands this. Why aren't you running for something?
I was trying to leave but Informed Citizen pulled me back in. I'm with Boyness, when do we start campaigning? You sound kind of lawyery but dead on the facts. Please write that same statement to all of the major papers and news groups.
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