Timothy Cole was an American military veteran and a Texas Tech University student. He was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student. In 1986, a jury convicted Tim and sentenced him to 25 years. 
 
Before the trial, he was offered probation in exchange for a guilty plea, and while in prison, he was offered parole if he admitted guilt. He refused to take the blame for a crime he did not commit. In December 1999, Tim died in prison at age 39 from complications from asthma.
 
In 1995, after the statute of limitations had expired, a Texas prisoner named Jerry Wayne Johnson wrote to judges, the trial prosecutor in Lubbock County, and Tim's defense lawyer, saying that he had committed the sexual assault. Johnson was serving a life sentence after convictions for two sexual assaults with similar characteristics to the attack for which Tim had been convicted. For years, his letters were ignored.
 
Eventually, Johnson's confessions reached the Innocence Project of Texas and Cole's family. Attorneys at the Innocence Project of Texas fought successfully to get the DNA evidence tested. The test result confirmed Johnson's confession.
 
A Texas judge officially exonerated Cole at an unprecedented posthumous hearing on April 7. 2009. Governor Rick Perry pardoned Tim on March 1, 2010—the first posthumous pardon in Texas history.

Soon after, Texas passed the Timothy Cole Act, increasing compensation paid to exonerees to $80,000 per year served, expanding services offered to the exonerated after their release, and adding compensation for the family of an exoneree if cleared after death. The state also created the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions to study the prevention of wrongful convictions across the state. 
 
The Timothy Cole Endowed Scholarship was established at the Law School to honor Tim's memory. In 2014, a 13-foot bronze statue of Tim was erected in Lubbock, and in March 2015, the Texas Tech University System regents posthumously conferred upon Tim an honorary law and social justice degree.

Endowments