Better late than never? Rick Perry posthumously pardons dead prisoner

[Don Zeko]

Apparently if you're imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit in Texas, you can get a pardon from Rick Perry. It's just that it'll require the guilty man to confess and lobby on your behalf, and the pardon will come ten years after your death. Would any of the fine folks who thought that Cameron Todd Willingham deserved to die for having his kids burn in an accidental fire like to explain why this man was really a guilty scumbag?

Timothy Cole, imprisoned while a 26-year-old student at Texas Tech University, had been failed by the justice system at every turn. But what makes his story particularly gut-wrenching is that he perished in prison even as the real rapist, Jerry Johnson, tried repeatedly to confess to the crime. By the time Johnson's story was heard, Cole had been dead nearly a decade.