Here is the story:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/050206dntexinnocence.1cf614f.html
"*On Tuesday, Cameron Todd Willingham’s last defenders – three relatives and a longtime opponent of the death penalty – argued that he was right: Texas killed an innocent man.
The New York-based Innocence Project presented a report signed by five arson experts that dissects trial testimony against Mr. Willis and Mr. Willingham now known to be based on obsolete assumptions. The center argued that the state should review all arson convictions.
“When do we start paying attention to these serious mistakes?” asked Barry Scheck, director of the project. “There was no credible scientific evidence to lead to the conviction, much less the execution, of Cameron Todd Willingham.” "*
also here:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/gen/ap/TX_Executions_Arson.html
*“It’s time to find out whether Texas executed an innocent man,” said Barry Scheck, co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project.
Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of arson murder in 1992 and executed in 2004. Ernest Willis, however, was convicted of the same type of crime but exonerated after getting sentenced to death and serving 17 years in prison.
“Somebody’s got to be right or wrong about this,” Scheck said, stressing that the two cases relied on similar evidence and testimony but ended in two entirely different outcomes.*
The Chigaco news: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0412090169dec09,1,1593269.story
*"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.”"*
Now, many dudes have come here and claimed that “so and so was innccent but executed”. But most times, the claims of “innocence” rely upon later recantations of Eyewitness testimony (recantations are rather common, and not to be relied upon) or small gaps or questions about the trial or defense. In almsot all the cases we have had a definate murder victim, and a convicted defendent with a serious felony record. So, perhaps we have doubts as to the “beyond all serious doubt” part of the conviction, but there is rarely any doubt as to the Motive, means, opportunity and especially that a Murder has actually been commited, and iof not by the defendant, then by who? Thus, I am often rather dubious about cries of “he’s innocent”, especially when the two most publizied “poster boys” (Tookie Williams and that cop-killer out East, what’shisname?) have left me with no doubt at all about their guilt.
But here, we have no crime at all. There was no murder. There was only two bits of evidence against Willingham- some bad science that turned an accidental fire into arson, and a “jailhouse informant” :dubious: - which is something Texas justice (and others, too) seems to rely upon hwaaaay too heavily: *"Prosecutors presented as their first witness jail inmate Johnny E. Webb, a drug addict who said he took psychiatric medication for post-traumatic stress syndrome, the result of being raped behind bars.
Webb testified that Willingham, after repeatedly denying he had caused the fire, confessed to Webb one day as they spoke through a chuckhole in a steel door at the county jail.
Webb said Willingham told him he set the fire to cover up his wife’s physical abuse of one of the girls. The girls, however, had no injuries other than those suffered in the fire."*
OK, can anyone defend the Death Penalty in Texas after this?