Texas is one step away from admitting it executed an INNOCENT man

[charlie]

In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson -- a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country's busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.

Indeed, the report concludes there was no evidence to determine that the December 1991 fire was even set, and it leaves open the possibility the blaze that killed three children was an accident and there was no crime at all -- the same findings found in a Chicago Tribune investigation of the case published in December 2004.

Willingham, the father of those children, was executed in February 2004. He protested his innocence to the end...



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-texas-execute-0824-082aug25,0,5812073.story

Somebody ask Scalia about this. We all need to hear him say "it ain't no thang" one more time, so everybody can be real clear about the sociopathic bottom-feeders Republicans like to put on the court.

[sharp_stick]

1. As though Texas

gives a shit if the people they kill in Huntsville are actually guilty. There are some really good people in that State but the stink emanating from the majority make the place unliveable.

[MellowDem]

Texas...

really isn't all that bad. It is not as conservative as many on here would like to think. I think it got that reputation because of Bush, who is actually not Texan. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah, etc. are all more (in some cases much more) conservative than Texas. Texas has actually been steadily becoming more progressive. And it's a huge freakin' state both in land and in population anymore. No reason to hate on a state, it's rather silly and unprogressive.

And having lived there, it is quite liveable depending on where you live. Most of the major cities, just like any other state, are actually quite liberal.

[LWolf]

25. But it was Texans who

voted Bush into the governor's office, setting him up for a future run for the WH, and who allowed their state government to be a front-leader in the authoritarian high-stakes testing "standards and accountability movement" that brought us NCLB.

That said, Texas also voted in Ann Richards, so it MUST have plenty of great people there, too.

I was a Californian for 35 years. California is not nearly as liberal as the rest of the nation thinks it is.

Or as they USED to think, before Arnie. :eyes:

[Lyric]

5. Half of the people HERE won't care if he was innocent.

Defend the legalized murder statutes to the end is their rallying cry. It sickens me. I'm sure we'll see a few of them here, telling us how a few innocent lives here and there are a fair trade for making sure that murderers die (and some even want to extend the state-murder punishment to crimes OTHER than murder.)

Well you know what? Ten thousand guilty murderers are NOT WORTH the life of even ONE innocent person. Our system is flawed and racist and classist, and therefore should NOT have the authority to dole out death as a punishment. We can make at least some attempt at compensation when we falsely imprison an innocent person, but we CANNOT GIVE BACK LIFE. We are not Gods, and we have NO RIGHT to take away what we cannot restore if it turns out that we were wrong.

I will never change my mind on this. Our nation is barbaric, period.

[stray cat]

6. Who HERE wants innocent people executed? Thats not part of any debate

[Lyric]

9. Strawman. Of course nobody WANTS an innocent person executed.

But the only way to be 100% sure that such a thing will never, ever happen is to abolish the death penalty. Anything less means that we are gambling the odds with peoples' lives.

But you knew that.

[BlueJazz]

12. I wish you would read the post I did awhile back...it gives an excellent ...

reason why the Death Penalty is so unjust.

[TexasProgresive]

13. You just assumed that no one wants an innocent person

executed. I have had people respond to my saying that the death penalty is too final and wrongly convicted people could be executed - they said, "So what, somebodies got to pay."

Just sayin'- Your statement is wrong.

[gleaner]

19. I don't think it is a baseless ...

assumption. Who in their right mind wants someone who is innocent to sit in prison much less die for something they did not do?

If you have had a lot of people respond to you that way, you might want to avoid them in the future. If anyone can die for no reason and it is all right with them, you might be next to be their "somebody who has to pay." If someone has so little regard for life do you think that yours would matter to them? It pays to pick your friends carefully.

As for admitting that a man was executed by mistake, I'm sure that will be a tremendous comfort to him and his family. Texas is notorious for being trigger happy on executions, and this is what inevitably happens in places which are.

[madmusic]

36. There are a few that imply he was guilty of something/sometime, close enough nt

[WillyT]

8. Exactly !!!

Couldn't have put it better.

:shrug:

[WillyT]

2. Huge K & R !!! - More Here:

:mad:

:kick:

<snip>

Fire that killed his 3 children could have been accidental
By Steve Mills and Maurice Possley; Chicago Tribune
December 9, 2004

CORSICANA, Texas -- Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber earlier this year, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, Cameron Todd Willingham declared his innocence one last time.

"I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."

While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.

Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction.

The author of the report, Gerald Hurst, reviewed additional documents, trial testimony and an hourlong videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene at the Tribune's request last month. Three other fire investigators--private consultants John Lentini and John DeHaan and Louisiana fire chief Kendall Ryland--also examined the materials for the newspaper.

"There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire," said Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist who has investigated scores of fires in his career. "It was just a fire."

Ryland, chief of the Effie Fire Department and a former fire instructor at Louisiana State University, said that, in his workshop, he tried to re-create the conditions the original fire investigators described.

When he could not, he said, it "made me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation. ... They executed this guy and they've just got no idea--at least not scientifically--if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set."

Even Edward Cheever, one of the state deputy fire marshals who had assisted in the original investigation of the 1991 fire, acknowledged that Hurst's criticism was valid.

"At the time of the Corsicana fire, we were still testifying to things that aren't accurate today," he said. "They were true then, but they aren't now.

"Hurst," he added, "was pretty much right on. ... We know now not to make those same assumptions."

A Tribune investigation of forensic science this year found that many of the pillars of arson investigation that were commonly believed for many years have been disproved by rigorous scientific scrutiny.

<snip>

Link: http://www.truthinjustice.org/willingham.htm

:argh:

[mnhtnbb]

3. Here's the key sentence

The marshal's findings, he added, "are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation."

Gee whiz, them Curshtians in TexA$$ don't need no stinkin' science to know who's guilty.

:sarcasm:

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Someday the US in general, and Texas in particular, will move away from this

barbaric practice. And this will be one reason why.

People don't care if the guilty are executed but once it enters the consciousness that the innocent are executed, it makes many death penalty advocates uncomfortable, and shakes that faith in the system.

Unfortunately we need this... and I hate it.

First we will see a refusal of other case reviews.

[jberryhill]

7. What I Don't Understand About "Christians"

If your religion is premised on the execution of an innocent man, one might think you'd have some valued insight here.

[TexasObserver]

10. This guy was probably innocent.

I still can't believe they convicted this guy, gave him the death penalty, and executed him.

Unfortunately, so many people are lap dog jurors, in courts run by GOP hanging judges, where all believe everything the police and prosecution say, and who ignore entirely the burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

I blame the Christian churches which lean right, and which ironically reject the call of Jesus for compassion, in favor of retribution.

[madrchsod]

11. -the convicted former illinois governor george ryan...

got in a big pissing contest with little georgie over executions.ryan challeged george to stop but george could`t stop killing people. this is a perfect example of texas legal system executing innocent people.

[unblock]

14. scalia has made his views on this topic all too clear:

the accused is entitled to a fair trial, not a correct verdict.
scalia is not bothered in the slightest by the idea of the state knowingly carrying out an execution based on an incorrect verdict.

[dysfunctional press]

32. how can any trial that convicts an innocent man be considered fair?

only from the mind of scalia.

[madmusic]

15. Curses! I unrecommended! Any way to fix that? Sorry.

[tkmorris]

16. No there isn't, but...

I just recced it to cancel your unrec.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. +1 for you and me

[madmusic]

35. Thanks.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

17. I've always recommended we move the "State of Israel" to Texas.

Don't ask me why.

[slampoet]

20. Exactly why i will never take a job in Texas. It just doesn't have basic American protections

[angstlessk]

21. well, he was white and in an attempt to balance out the death penalty...HE HAD TO GO!

hell, how many white men does the prosecution suggest for the death penalty...and have it carried out...they gotta have their 'affirmative action' numbers..donca know!

[struggle4progress]

22. Report on the Peer Review of the Expert Testimony in the Cases of

State of Texas v. Cameron Todd Willingham and State of Texas v. Ernest Ray Willis

Report of the Innocence Project Arson Review Committee

Executive Summary

Neither the fire that killed the three Willingham children nor the fire that killed Elizabeth Grace Belue and Gail Joe Allison were incendiary fires. The artifacts examined and relied upon by the fire investigators in both cases are the kind of artifacts routinely created by accidental fires that progress beyond flashover.

The State’s expert witnesses in both cases relied on interpretations of “indicators” that they were taught constituted evidence of arson. While we have no doubt that these witnesses believed what they were saying, each and every one of the indicators relied upon have since been scientifically proven to be invalid.

To the extent that there are still investigators in Texas and elsewhere, who interpret low burning, irregular fire patterns and collapsed furniture springs as indicators of incendiary fires, there will continue to be serious miscarriages of justice ...

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:jjTVcxwBF40J:www.innocenceproject.org/docs/ArsonReviewReport.pdf+%22Cameron+Todd+Willingham%22&cd=17&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/ArsonReviewReport.pdf

[TexasObserver]

37. And it gets worse. This was a railroading by cops and prosecutors.

They created this case with contrived evidence and probably perjured testimony.

The Tribune obtained a copy of the review by Craig Beyler, of Hughes Associates Inc., which was conducted for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, created to investigate allegations of forensic error and misconduct. The re-examination of the Willingham case comes as many forensic disciplines face scrutiny for playing a role in wrongful convictions that have been exposed by DNA and other scientific advances.

Among Beyler's key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams' house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham's injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.

The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote. The marshal's findings, he added, "are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation."

Over the past five years, the Willingham case has been reviewed by nine of the nation's top fire scientists -- first for the Tribune, then for the Innocence Project, and now for the commission. All concluded that the original investigators relied on outdated theories and folklore to justify the determination of arson.

--- from the article cited in the OP

[boppers]

23. Convicted Burglar, Car Thief, Wife beater (while she was pregnant)

Hadn't paid rent on the place for two months. Watched the house burn rather than attempt to save his kids. Tried to save his car from the flames. Lighter fluid container found on the front porch, residue found in the house.

The report is right that on review, there wasn't clear evidence of the 1-3 fires in the house being deliberately set. It could have been an accident of some kind, and him being kind of apathetic about trying to save his kids, with lighter fluid sprayed into the house by fire hoses.... kind of unlikely, but possible.

A more detailed story from 2004, by the same reporter:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0412090169dec09,0,1173806.story

That's what juries are for. His took an hour.

[Hippo_Tron]

34. In other words, he was convicted for his history

[boppers]

43. A history of trying to kill your children...

...Tends to follow you when your children die near you.

The other pieces of his past point to the lie that he was "innocent". He may have been innocent in some ways, but he was found guilty, repeatedly, as a career criminal.

[Hippo_Tron]

44. Executing somebody for a history of crimes that they previously committed but are not on tiral for..

Is nothing more than a state sanctioned lynch mob. Either he can be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of murdering his children or he can't. Anything else is barbaric and a mockery of justice.

[boppers]

45. He was found guilty. By a jury of his peers.

Some of the expert testimony has since been cast into doubt as being "always true", but that's only one portion of the case.

Oh, and typically, prior conviction information isn't allowed in court, because that might sway the jury, unless that information is relevant (like trying to kill your kids before).

[tjwash]

24. Not the first, won't be the last.

I know a lot of people in Texas. I'm 90 percent certain that the general reaction will be something about breaking eggs to make omelets. The sad reality is...Once the sentence is carried out there is no appeal.

[Rex]

26. So he lost his kids to a fire then got murdered by the state for it.

Wow, that really is hell on earth.

[timo]

27. fuck texas bashers

Not a perfect state, but if Texas is so bad, why do all the yankees seem to end up moving down here?

[Name removed]

28. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DFW]

29. I had a radical cure for this a few years back

I got roundly thrashed for suggesting it, and it was a little over the top, no question about it.

But in a society that refuses to abolish the death penalty, it surely would have worked to deter
its being meted out unjustly. I basically said, what if there were a law saying that should a person
be shown to have been executed for a crime he or she did not commit, or where reasonable doubt persisted
in the absence of proof, that the prosecutor (if there was an alternative to asking for the death penalty),
presiding judge (or the one passing sentence), and governor of the state (in the case of the governor having
the power to commute, and refusing to do so) all share the fate of the wrongly executed person.

Yeah, Yeah, I know. No need to go over the excesses of such an idea once again. We all agreed the first
time that it's excessive.

It WOULD be one hell of a deterrent to execution of the innocent, though, donch'all think? It would
probably lead to the commutation of the death sentences of some truly horrible people, as well. But
if it would save just one wrongly condemned person, I say commute away. You don't have to let the bad
guys escape, as in Blackstone's original quote. Just don't kill them all off. You want blood? Go
watch "Kill Bill, " or something.

Being a Texan who is just sick and tired of seeing this happen again and again in my state, I just
daydream about WHAT it would take to have my trigger-happy (now needle-happy) judicial system stop
this kind of institutionalized lynch mob behavior? Short of abolishing the death penalty altogether
(Texas would never do it on a state level--it would have to be a federal mandate), I'd love to hear
any suggestions as to how to get the place I call home to STOP THIS RITUAL STATE KILLING FOR GOOD.

[girl gone mad]

30. He wasn't exactly an ideal poster boy for innocence.

After his conviction, he and his wife divorced. She later stated that she believed that Willingham was guilty. Prosecutors alleged this was part of a pattern of behavior intended to rid himself of his children. Willingham had a history of committing crimes, including burglary, grand larceny and car theft. There was also an incident when he beat his pregnant wife over the stomach with a telephone to induce a miscarriage.

When asked if he had a final statement, Willingham said: "Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby."

However, his final words were directed at his ex-wife, Stacy Willingham. He turned to her and said "I hope you rot in hell, bitch" several times while attempting to extend his middle finger in an obscene gesture. His ex-wife did not show any reaction to this.


Neighbors and firefighters testified that he was more concerned about saving his personal property than saving the kids.

[dysfunctional press]

31. fuck texas.

it's like they're in some kind of unofficial contest with florida to determine the most hellish place to live exist in the country.

it was a toss-up...

[samsingh]

33. another tragedy caused by repugs.

[GodlyDemocrat]

38. Cameron Willingham displayed very odd behavior during the fire

And had a very shady past, including choking his wife with a telephone cord causing a miscarriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

[TexasObserver]

39. The fire was not arson, say numerous experts.

You are doing the one thing that trials for murder should never do: try someone for their history instead of trying them for the crime they are accused of committing.

A person can be a rotten SOB and innocent, too. That's usually how the hundreds of prisoners released upon exculpatory DNA evidence were convicted. People just like you found them guilty of being an SOB and therefore guilty of some crime of which they are accused.

[GodlyDemocrat]

41. I'm not trying him for anything, but I don't think as a Texan the capital murder system is just

Even though I personally oppose the death penalty, I do think the death penalty is constitutional. However, there is so much room for error (false positives) and arbritrary punishment in the current system that it does not seem fair. However again, I don't think that it will be easy to show that Cameron Willingham was actually innocent ... I don't think that has happened yet. And until and unless that happens, the claim that George W. Bush once made that no innocent man has been executed post 1976 is going to persist.

[boppers]

42. "The fire was not arson"...That's not what the experts said.

They said that the indicators that were used were possibly mis-interpreted.

It could have been arson, *or* an accident.

Than doesn't mean it wasn't arson, it means that it wasn't *definitely* arson.

[HughMoran]

47. Doesn't *or* provide reasonable doubt?

Isn't that's all that's required here?

[boppers]

48. *Or* can provide a reasonable doubt.

However, *or* must be weighed in the totality of the case.

There's a movie classic, "12 angry men", where all of the different possibilities are considered, and in the end, a jury changes its mind.

OTOH, the whole point of "reasonable" doubt is not that alternative possibilities exist, but whether or not they are reasonable.

The *or* in this case offered by the defense was that a small child knocked over a lamp with fuel, in a house where electrical fires could have started, and that the father tried to save the children after a coincidence that involved an un-noticed fuel spill, and an electrical fire.

[HughMoran]

49. Anyway, people should not be murdered by the state when there is any doubt at all

There's nothing to discuss if there's any doubt at all.

[boppers]

50. Well, slightly different topic than innocence vs. guilt...

I think you could have stopped at "people should not be murdered by the state".

There will always be doubt.

There will always be arguments about new developments.

Hence, murder by the state based on old, or new, information makes no sense. Ever.

If he had a retrial today, would he be convicted again? I think it's pretty likely...

...but you can't undo a killing, regardless of the case.

Killing someone means that no matter the information, new evidence, etc., a person can never be freed.

[Heidi]

40. Recommended. (nt)

[HughMoran]

46. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

Kick anyway.