Legislation
The Texas Senate passed legislation to exonerate Cole. The Texas House of Representatives bill passed through committee and then the full house. After that, it went to Governor Rick Perry to be signed into law. Another bill, named after Cole, was passed by the legislature and sent to the governor on May 11, 2009. It made those who are falsely convicted of a crime eligible for $160,000 for each year of incarceration and provide them with free college tuition. The bill also established the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions. A panel set up to study the causes of wrongful convictions and to devise ways of preventing them is to report to the Texas governor no later than 2011. While Rick Perry stated he wanted to issue a pardon, he felt that he was not legally able to do so. However, on January 7, 2010, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion which cleared the way for the governor to pardon Cole. On March 2, 2010, Governor Rick Perry granted Timothy Cole the state's first posthumous pardon.
Read more about this topic: Tim Cole
Famous quotes containing the word legislation:
“Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)