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 ...
To judge bias, you'd have to have statistics on how many times TIP looks at a case vs how many times the "find" the party innocent. If they look at hundreds of thousands of cases at random and found a thousand wrong, that's probably not bias.
If they almost always manage to find people "innocent", it's probably because the people they hire know what the outcome has to be.
Another check for bias -- see if they use the same people all the time. Then see if they tend to use experts that agree with their assessment, and replace experts that don't.
I believe that, without any real evidence, we could presume that researchers picked for their studies are picked because they have a bias toward finding fault with prosecutions, and since this organization makes it's money by finding mistakes, they have a monetary bias toward finding mistakes.
I don't know the background of this case, but it IS important to distinguish between innocent people being convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and violent low-life scum being convicted of a crime they didn't commit. The latter is a lot more common than the former (as so aptly demonstrated by that monster who got sprung a couple of years ago on a "wrongly convicted" decision, and promptly abducted, raped, tortured, and killed a young woman, burned her body and hid it in a junkyard). Juries and judges generally take the defendant's demeanor, and other info about him/her into account (though they're generally not allowed to hear specifics of past convictions until the sentencing phase) when deciding if the evidence is sufficient to convict, and sufficient to warrant life w/o parole or the death penalty.
If you put them in prison for life, they might kill other inmates.
But that wouldn't satisfy the spectators.
He has gotten lots of people found guilty freed. We don't KNOW they were innocent, we only know that he was able to cast enough doubt on the cases that they were freed.
It is true that once convicted, there is a bias toward keeping people in jail, so you can't simply prove "reasonable doubt" and get a person freed. And I certain that many of the exonerated people were actually innocent.
But in the abstract, you have this organization that only exists by finding innocence -- so all its time and energy is devoted to finding people "wrongly convicted". If they can't find any, they go out of business.
On the other side you have a court system that has nothing to gain by keeping people in prison, and maybe a victim with little money fighting to keep the person in prison.
So it's not unlikely that in some cases people, especially if they've served most of their sentence and have been model prisoners, might be found "no longer guilty" simply because the state can't waste it's energy fighting for the last year of a 10-year sentence, since it's trying to put new criminals in prison.
It's the same principle that nearly guarantees that government will enact new programs, but never cancel any.
Why? Do you think the outcome of a trial should only depend on your opinion of the perp rather than whether it's the right person? You seem to be willing to commit two crimes; first convicting a person who did not do the crime; and second, letting the real perp go.
A crime is commited. A person is executed. Point made. ¡Strelnikov!
I think the death penalty shouldn't be an option when potentially misleading or false evidence is involved. But in plenty of cases the accused has publicly confessed, or even bragged about the crime; and/or there were multiple witnesses who had no prior connection to the accused, along with an on-the-scene arrest (eliminating the mistaken identity possibility). There is just no reason for taxpayers to foot the bill for imprisoning perps in those sorts of cases.
I love how DNA evidence is good enough to free people on death row, but seemingly never good enough to execute them.
Sure it is. It's isn't as dramatic though. DNA is good enought that such evidence often leads to a plea bargain nowdays.
I'd certainly like to see the real perp nabbed too, but I'm not going to shed any tears over a violent sociopath getting the death penalty, regardless of whether the specific crime for which it was given was indisputably proven to have been committed by that person. Too bad for that young woman that her "wrongly convicted" killer didn't get the death penalty. The object of the system should be to keep as many innocent people alive and safe as possible; not to sacrifice thousands of innocent people in the name of keeping the government's criminal justice system perfectly pure. As an innocent person, I'd a lot rather die by lethal injection, than by the means commonly employed by violent sociopaths.
There's nothing wrong with the Texas Justice system except Ronnie Earl, and we take too long to have our death row inmates assume room temperature. But, then it's always harder when you have to play catch-up.
Again you are willing to commit two crimes.
so sitting around on the taxpayers dime for 20 years is ok?
give me one good reason why BTK should still be alive.
The problem is not that this piece of human debris got out for a crime he *didn't* commit, but that he was not correctly prosecuted and dealth with for the crimes he DID commit.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.