AUSTIN – The governor, contrary to an old legal opinion, can grant a pardon to Timothy Cole, who died in prison before he could be proved innocent, Attorney General Greg Abbott said in an opinion issued Thursday.

Gov. Rick Perry indicated he looked forward to pardoning Cole, who died in prison in 1999 after being convicted of a 1985 rape that DNA evidence later showed he did not commit. Perry said the opinion "finally gives his family the opportunity to officially clear his name.

"I hope the Board of Pardons and Paroles will act swiftly in sending a recommendation to my desk so that justice can finally be served," the governor said. Under state law, he can only grant clemency if the board recommends it.

Perry had previously said he couldn't consider a pardon in the case, citing a 1965 attorney general's decision that suggested someone must be alive to legally accept a pardon.

But Abbott said more contemporaneous rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and new state legislation have changed the interpretation of Texas law regarding pardons.

Cole is the first person in Texas exonerated by DNA evidence posthumously.

A state court judge, looking at DNA evidence and another inmate's confession, found conclusively that Cole was innocent of the rape, which occurred when he was a student in Lubbock.

Cole, who grew up in Fort Worth, where most of his family still lives, died of asthma in state prison in 1999.

"It's the final hurdle in a marathon race that we've been in for a quarter century to clear Tim's name," said Cole's brother, Cory Sessions.

His family, with the court's ruling of innocence, was already eligible for state recompense, which amounts to just over $1 million based on his 13 years of wrongful incarceration.

Sessions said that the family hasn't put in a claim for the money yet because there was still work to be done. "That's not what we were after," he said.

In letters Cole wrote to family members from prison, he repeated that he wanted three things: vindication, exoneration and a full pardon.

"Tim's name was soiled by the state, and we want it cleaned by the state," Sessions said.

It has been a long battle, he said, giving much of the credit to the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit group that researches questionable cases and pushes for convictions to be overturned.

"The light at the end of the tunnel is a lot brighter today," he said.