Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?
When The New Yorker reporter David Grann posed that question in his thorough revisiting in early September of the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 for killing his three daughters in a fire—later ruled arson—two days before Christmas in 1991, I figured it would wind up as one of those intriguing, yet unprovable, mysteries.
But yesterday, the story got some legs: According to The Associated Press, Gov. Rick Perry (R)—in office at the time of the execution and currently in a contentious bid for reelection—removed three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission just before they were to review a report highly critical of the arson investigation that led to Willingham’s execution.
Grann’s reporting on Willingham’s case—a story of botched investigations, fairy tale fire science, unreliable witnesses, and a state indigent defense system in tatters—raises reasonable doubt that justice was done. Perry’s actions today are almost sure to also raise eyebrows in a case long in the cross hairs of death penalty opponents.
One, the Innocence Project, already says flatly that Texas executed a man who was not guilty:
In the days leading up to Willingham’s execution, his attorneys sent the [Texas] governor [Rick Perry] and the Board of Pardon and Parole a report from Gerald Hurst, a nationally recognized arson expert, saying that Willingham’s conviction was based on erroneous forensic analysis. Documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials received that report but apparently did not act on it.
The Innocence Project, in fact, was instrumental in getting the Texas Forensic Science Commission to investigate the case. It hired renowned arson expert Craig Beyler—who is quoted extensively in The New Yorker piece—to investigate. His damning report, issued August 2009, says the inculpatory evidence presented against Willingham was wrong—and that the experts who testified against him should have known it.
As the Innocence Project notes, the Texas commission was supposed to issue its own conclusions some time during 2010. Perry’s actions now to replace commission members who were about to deliberate on the matter, according to AP, put the panel in disarray, forcing the meeting’s cancelation.
As the panel regroups, it will be interesting to see if the motivations of Perry—who has defended the execution and told the AP that the commission personnel changes are “standard business as usual”—are further scrutinized.
Willingham maintained his innocence until his death.