by Brian Howe
Just before Christmas in 1991, Cameron Todd Willingham’s Texas home caught fire, killing his three young daughters. Willingham was inside asleep when the fire started. He managed to escape, but told investigators that he had been unable to find the girls in the intense heat and smoke. Investigators were suspicious about his attitude following the incident, and these suspicions were confirmed when the fire investigators discovered what they believed were tell-tale signs of arson. Willingham was arrested for murder and placed in the local county jail. While the parties prepared for trial, another inmate came forward to inform authorities that Willingham had confessed the murder to him through a slot in his cell door. Willingham steadfastly maintained his innocence. He refused to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison, and he was convicted and sentenced to death.
In 2004, on the eve of his execution, Willingham’s lawyers produced expert testimony showing that the arson evidence used to convict him had been completely discredited. What the investigators believed were signs of accelerants were now known to be consistent with accidental fires. The
Texas Forensic Science Commission has since
confirmed that the arson evidence used to convict Willingham is scientifically invalid and misleading, and there is a state level review for other convictions based on this junk science.
Prosecutors in Willingham’s case were not convinced. Specifically, they pointed to the testimony of the prison snitch, Johnny Webb. Snitches are notoriously unreliable, but Webb was adamant at trial that he was not offered any sort of deal in exchange for his testimony against Willingham. Even if the arson evidence was false, what possible motivation could Webb have had to fabricate Willingham’s confession?
Texas governor Rick Perry refused to grant a stay, and on February 17, 2004, Willingham was executed by lethal injection. His last words were: “”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 twelve 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.”
Last week, the New York based
Innocence Project filed a detailed grievance complaint against the original prosecutor on the case. According to the filing, the prosecutor did offer Webb significant benefits in exchange for his testimony against Willingham, and later took significant steps to cover up the undisclosed deal, even as attorneys appealed Willingham’s death sentence. The allegations are supported by Webb’s own admissions and multiple documents from the time. They range from coaching Webb to say the fires had been started in the corners of the home, to instructing the clerk’s office to falsely tell the prison that Webb had been convicted of a lesser offense so he would be eligible for parole, to an alleged friend and campaign supporter directly giving over $10,000 to Webb upon his release. Webb has now officially recanted, admitted that Willingham never confessed to him, and claims to have fabricated the story in exchange for these benefits. In other words, all the evidence now points to the fire as having been accidental, and if the charges against Willingham were brought today, they would be immediately dismissed. I think even the most stubborn of skeptics (See Justice Scalia’s opinion in
Kansas v. Marsh, 548 US 163, 193 (2006) now must admit that it appears as though Texas has executed an innocent man.
This news follows on the heels of an
empirical study showing as many as 4% of death row inmates may be innocent. Just this year, the states of Ohio, Oklahoma, and Arizona have conducted human experiments with new drug cocktails– the results of which have included subjecting inmates to twelve rounds of injections and hours of gasping and writhing before their ultimate deaths. I wonder if we could be reaching a point where the weight of these stories is enough to prompt another national dialogue in this country about death penalty. As some point, we may question whether all of this is worth whatever benefits we are supposedly getting from being the last developed nation to execute convicted inmates.
