Texas Governor shakes up Commission (wrongful execution)

[ovidsen]

It's enough to make you sick.

HOUSTON — Just before he was executed in 2004 for setting a fire that killed his three children just before Christmas in 1991, Cameron T. Willingham declared, “I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit.” Now his words seem to be echoing in the race for governor of Texas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/us/02texas.html?scp=2&sq=texas&st=nyt

Here's a brief summary. Willingham had always insisted he was innocent. After firegighters arrived at his house, witnesses said he had to be handcuffed to a truck to keep him from running back in to save "my babies". But some county investigators, using techniques that one critic described later as "voodoo" concluded it was arson. In final arguments, the prosecutor in Willingham's case said he started the fire because his daughters were distracting him from his "beer and darts".

This conclusion was challenged in death row appeals on Willingham's behalf, right up until he died. This week, some of these experts were scheduled to testify before the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Wednesday, Texas Governor Rick Perry effectively canceled those hearings by replacing the head of the Commission and two other members:

Mr. Perry’s decision to shake up the commission and put one of his political allies in charge has, at the least, delayed the inquiry into the Willingham case. While Mr. Perry says he has no political motive for the move, his opponents have called for the commission to finish its inquiry.

In the long run, this may be a boost for US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the underdog candidate in the 2010 Texas GOP gubernatorial primary:

“I am for the death penalty,” Ms. Hutchison told The Dallas Morning News, “but always with the absolute assurance that you have the ability to be sure, with the technology that we have, that a person is guilty.”

Given a limited choice, I have to side with Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senior Senator from Texas.

For more on this, click to the link below from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/01/cameron-willingham-governor-perry-texas

It includes a link to an article in the New Yorker last month that should make you wonder why on earth Governor Perry has this thing for executing people when there is far more than a reasonable doubt concerning their guilt.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. If one needs a good argument against

the death penalty, one needs to look no farther than Texas.

[BlooInBloo]

4. The only relevant question to DP supporters is: How many innocent deaths are acceptable?

[LuvNewcastle]

6. Some people believe, in their heart of hearts,

that everyone is guilty. It's an original sin thing, and the blacker you are and the more white trashier you are, the more likely you are to be guilty. My father and I were arguing over Guantanamo and he was angry that we were giving some of them trials. I said that some of them are innocent, we have to give them trials. He had a smirk on his face and said that all of them were guilty of something.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Yep. I want them to be forced to say it out loud, though.

[ovidsen]

8. None, of course.

This is why I like Hutchinson's quote in the NYTimes article. She says (and hey, she is a Republican running for governor in Texas) that the death penalty should be carried out only when the proof that the condemned prisoner is guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. I presume she means that if there is even a hint that someone may not be guilty, the death penalty option should not exist.

I'm against the death penalty in principle. But if you're going to have it, at least make sure that there is no reasonable, no shadow of a doubt that the person about to be put to death is guilty.

In this case, Texas governor Perry seems to be happy with a far, far lower standard of proof. It makes me sick.

[BlooInBloo]

2. For about as full a story as one could hope for, see the New Yorker essay....

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

[ovidsen]

9. An excellent article on this case.

I mentioned in my OP that the Guardian article I liked to had a link of its own to the New Yorker article. Your post gives DUers who perhaps couldn't find that link direct access to it.

And for that, I thank i. If after reading it, you aren't angry, then you may not have a pulse. You certainly don't have a heart.

[Selatius]

3. From what I have discovered, the evidence that Willingham was innocent was quite strong, very strong

Multiple fire experts testified that the original investigation was tremendously flawed using outdated scientific information.

The State of Texas would've been put in the position of admitting for the first time that it was responsible for killing an innocent man. With Perry re-shuffling the deck half-way through the inquiry, the commission's findings are now open to question.

[grantcart]

5. npr had a good summary here

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=113405213&m=113406103