Posted on 05/03/2006 8:33:25 AM PDT by Crackingham
Four of the nation's top arson experts have concluded that the state of Texas executed a man in 2004 based on scientifically invalid evidence, and on Tuesday they called for an official reinvestigation of the case. In their report, the experts, assembled by the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization responsible for scores of exonerations, concluded that the conviction and 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson-murders of his three daughters were based on interpretations by fire investigators that have been scientifically disproved.
"The whole system has broken down," Barry Scheck, co-founder and director of the Innocence Project, said at a news conference at the state Capitol in Austin. "It's time to find out whether Texas has executed an innocent man."
The experts were asked to perform an independent review of the evidence after an investigation by the Tribune that showed Willingham had been found guilty on arson theories that have been repudiated by scientific advances. In fact, many of the theories were simply lore that had been handed down by generations of arson investigators who relied on what they were told.
The report's conclusions match the findings of the Tribune, published in December 2004. The newspaper began investigating the Willingham case following an October 2004 series, "Forensics Under the Microscope," which examined the use of forensics in the courtroom, including the continued use of disproved arson theories to obtain convictions.
In strong language harshly critical of the investigation of the 1991 fire in Corsicana, southeast of Dallas, the report said evidence examined in the Willingham case and "relied upon by fire investigators" was the type of evidence "routinely created by accidental fires."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Hey, guys, there's an extremely questionable case in Durham, North Carolina you'd be interested in. What, too busy?
It is amazing how the bleeding hearts find the biggest scumbags to try to make their case. Stoney, you really want to defend this low-life???? If this is the case liberal bleeding hearts are going to hang their hat on, I say, have at it.
Yeah, and firefighters say he was very distraught over the loss....of his dartboard! What a pile of dung. Three children ages 2, 1 and 1 dead, and he frets over a $50 dartbaord. This guy makes OJ look like a decent guy.
Money isn't just something you print more of. It is chunks of people's lives. Hours they couldn't spend with their children because they were working (often resulting in unsupervised children coming to serious harm). Hours they couldn't spend reading and learning because they were down in a mine or on a factory line. Hours they couldn't sleep, at great expense to their health and longevity, because between work, and looking after children, and everything else, there just weren't enough hours left. Hours that weren't available to go to the doctor and get that breast lump checked out before it was too late.
Money DOES matter. The cost to keep a criminal in prison for one year is about the same as the average working American's pre-tax pay. Keeping a criminal in prison for a real life term costs about what an average worker earns in a lifetime. Chunks of millions of innocent people's lives are not monopoly money to be thrown around lightly to maintain some lofty principles, for the sake of a handful of people who might suffer serious injustice otherwise. There are no perfect answers, but making innocent people pay through the nose to maintain a huge long-term prisoner population, just because a tiny few of those prisoners may be truly innocent, is hardly justice. In the absence of perfect answers, the only reasonable route is the one that minimizes harm to innocent people as a whole, not one which eliminates serious harm to a small subgroup of innocent people, at the expense of the rest.
AxelPaulsenJr; - did not mean to ignore you earlier, I am in the process of compiling some stats...
CRIMINAL HISTORY/PUNISHMENT PHASE EVIDENCE
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals summarized the evidence presented during the punishment phase of Willingham’s trial as follows:
At the punishment phase of trial, testimony was presented that Willingham has a history of violence. He has been convicted of numerous felonies and misdemeanors, both as an adult and as a juvenile, and attempts at various forms of rehabilitation have proven unsuccessful.
The jury also heard evidence of Willingham’s character. Witnesses testified that Willingham was verbally and physically abusive toward his family, and that at one time he beat his pregnant wife in an effort to cause a miscarriage. A friend of Willingham’s testified that Willingham once bragged about brutally killing a dog. In fact, Willingham openly admitted to a fellow inmate that he purposely started this fire to conceal evidence that the children had been abused.
Dr. James Grigson testified for the state at punishment. According to his testimony, Willingham fits the profile of a sociopath whose conduct becomes more violent over time, and who lacks a conscience. Grigson explained that a person with this degree of sociopathy commonly has no regard for other people’s property or for other human beings. He expressed his opinion that an individual demonstrating this type of behavior can not be rehabilitated in any manner, and that such a person certainly poses a continuing threat to society.
Prior to DNA, they could only use blood-type when trying to find a suspect. In most cases the crime labs held onto the samples and then later used the new method of DNA to either prove or disprove their cases. In my point of view, this use of present day forensics was prudent, not disingenuious.
If this is the best case they can come up with to show that innocent people are being executed, the integrity of our court system is rock solid.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN would all be mentioning his name ten thousand times each every single time a new death penalty case came up.
Instead, what we get is "Well, there just HAS to be SOMEONE who was innocent who was put to death." Scheck thought he had found one in Roger Coleman in Virginia. The DNA was resubmitted. For months we read of now dead witnesses and tainted evidence. The little bleeding hearts of flower children everywhere were lifted when Mark Warner, in optimum-pandering mode, announced that he would hold a news conference to share the findings of the DNA.
Would Coleman be found innocent? The anti-execution crowd was certain he would.
Alas, a crestfallen Warner had to announce, at the risk of huge embarrassment, that Coleman had, in fact, committed the murder for which he had been returned to room temperature.
Now, lookee here. We've got another case. Four arson "experts", with the tools of present-day forensics, are put at the service of TIP to prove that a bunch of Texas hicks had executed an innocent man. An innocent man who stood outside and watched a fire he had set consume his own flesh and blood. Actually, he didn't stand. He leaned against his sports car, which he had carefully removed from the garage while the fire he had set was burning the flesh off his children.
Let me pick four other arson experts, or as many fire experts as I can find who will back the story that Willingham was rightly executed. I'll bet I could find four.
They still haven't found the holy grail, have they? No one can put forth a single name of an individual who was undoubtedly innocent of the crime for which he was executed.
And, you're right. If TIP and their sycophants had a name, it would be better known in America than Ted Bundy's.
Kind of like Matthew Shepherd, who had daily stories for years as the liberal media shilled for more hate speech and hate crime laws.
In fact, Willingham openly admitted to a fellow inmate that he purposely started this fire to conceal evidence that the children had been abused
My prior post had nothing to do with the punishment phase. There was plenty of evidence to convict the SOB. The punishment phase just reaffirms the verdict of the trial. Are you going to argue that on a technicality this guilty as hell bastard should be found innocent.
You know I did in fact find a post that Crack made to a thread not his own, back in March.
It serves the cause of a disingenuous organization, The Innocence Project, whose sole mission is to eliminate the death penalty. They have convinced you, apparently, that using present-day methods to resurrect 20 year old cases which were decided with the tools of the time is appropriate.
On another front, these same whiners are throwing sand into the death house gears by asserting, with straight faces, that it is cruel and unusual punishment for a convicted criminal to experience the slightest discomfort while on his way to meet his maker.
I heard one of these advocates say "There can be no doubt that an inmate experiences pain from the effects of lethal drugs."
So, in keeping with the general tenor of the times, the death penalty appears to be on the way out, once again, in favor of "life without parole" which will, at some point, come under attack as cruel and unusual, as it deprives an inmate of the opportunity to rehabilitate his life and live it outside the confines of a prison.
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