“one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.”
-Sir John Fortescue, 1470
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.
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.
The only other evidence of significance against Willingham was another inmate who testified that Willingham had confessed to him. Jailhouse snitches are viewed with skepticism in the justice system, so much so that some jurisdictions have restrictions against their use.
So here we have a man who is likely innocent of the crime he was convicted of. I guess we could always just get the decision reversed on appeal and let him go free… Oh wait… We can’t… Because he was executed. There is no appealing death.
This story hit a nerve with me because it comes very close to the release of the piece of garbage that bombed Lockerbie 103 and the visceral reaction his release brought out in people. There were many who used his release as pro-forma evidence of a need for a death penalty for people of his ilk. After all, only guilty people get the death penalty, and he should be dead!
The problem, of course, comes in cases like Cameron Todd Willingham’s, when the case proceeds along without any indication it’s shaky, or even outwardly wrong. Instead, it’s all finished and at that point, he gets sentenced to death, and is killed. Everyone is made whole. Let’s all go home.
Except now we have a dead innocent man.
Although Fortescue’s principle isn’t acknowledged as being his (William Blackstone gets that credit, although Fortescue and others adopted it much earlier than the 1760 date attributed him), he’s correct. The finality of death combined with the imperfection of human judgment, to me, is enough of a reason that the death penalty should be abolished.