For the first time in history, a state is reviewing whether it executed an innocent man.
A Texas panel will investigate whether a man executed for setting a fire that killed his three daughters actually started the blaze.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed Friday to review conclusions that Cameron Todd Willingham set the fire in 1991. He was executed in 2004.
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The Innocence Project, a legal group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.
You can read an extensive account I wrote of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted and executed for arson and murder based on junk science, here. But a brief synopsis of the case, and a discussion of today's events, lay below the fold.
A brief disclosure: one of the experts who co-authored the Innocence Project report mentioned in the AP piece is my father, John Lentini, who has written extensively on fire science and errors made during investigations. His book, Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigations, is available on Amazon.com
First, the case in question:
In 2004, a high school dropout named Cameron Todd Willingham (Prisoner #999041) was executed by the State of Texas for the horrific crime of killing his three little girls--one two year-old and two one year-old twins--by setting their home on fire and letting them die in the blaze.
It was the only time on record when an execution was carried out for someone convicted of using fire as a murder weapon.
Willingham, by any measure of the evidence presented at trial, was innocent of the crime for which he was executed.
In his investigation of the fire scene, the Fire Marshal noted what he considered twenty indicators of arson, which were subsequently cited at trial. A review of that report, conducted by a panel of experts about 13 years later on behalf of the Innocence Project, revealed that, in all twenty instances, the Fire Marshal had erred in declaring he had found signs of arson.
What happened was, between the 1991 fire and the 2004 execution, dozens of myths in fire investigation had been disproved. Some of these myths were disproved by the Oakland wildfires in the early 1990s, when fire investigators got a chance to look at numerous homes that were known to have been burned by accidental fires and saw many of the same "indicators of arson" they had been taught to regard as Gospel. Many of those myths were in fact the basis of the report that sent Willingham to his death.
Much of the review of the original "evidence" that condemned Willingham is reproduced in my original post on the execution, linked above. The list is damning, to say the least.
In short, the state of fire investigations at the time of Willingham's execution was such as to render meaningless all the purported evidence used against him at trial. In no way, given current fire debris analysis, could Cameron Todd Willingham have been proven guilty.
Presented with this report eviscerating the case against Willingham, Gov. Rick Perry refused to grant a stay of execution, and Cameron Todd Willingham was killed by the state of Texas February 17, 2004.
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Following the exhaustive reporting of the Chicago Tribune (especially journalists Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, who first brought my father into the case when they asked him to review it for their reporting) and several other high-profile cases involving junk science leading to capital convictions, the Texas Legislature established the Texas Forensic Science Commission to review allegations of professional neglect and misconduct, and to report on their findings.
Today's decision by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to continue their investigation of the Willingham case is a major step forward in defendants' rights, albeit one taken too late to help Willingham. Texas is, for the first time, admitting the possibility that the state executed an innocent man. And the strength of the report is difficult to ignore: disproved forensics were the entire basis of the conviction, a fact which was known to the state of Texas, including Governor Perry, at the time of Willingham's execution.
By setting up this commission and giving a fair review to the Willingham case, Texas, of all states, might just provide the one piece of ammunition most often noted as lacking in the arsenal of death penalty opponents: official recognition by the government that an innocent person was executed. If the TFSC does its job properly and remains bound by the facts of the case, that's exactly the conclusion they ought to reach.
This could be a game-changer in the national debate over the death penalty. Stay tuned.
And I would be remiss if I didn't point out the incredible work done by the Innocence Project to keep this case alive years after Willingham himself was killed. If you can, please consider rewarding their efforts and helping them continue their work for justice.
Update [2008-8-15 21:36:21 by JR]:: Something I'm very glad to be typing for a number of reasons--Welcome, TalkLeft Readers!