The report calls on the criminal justice system to require arson investigators to have backgrounds in the science of fire and that criminal defense lawyers be afforded money to hire independent fire investigators. It also urges that participants in the justice system, particularly prosecutors, who decide whether to bring charges, be educated about scientific advances in fire investigation.
"There is no crime other than homicide by arson for which a person can be sent to Death Row based on the unsupported opinion of someone who received all of his training `on the job,'" the report states.
At the news conference Tuesday, Lentini said the analysis of the testimony by fire investigators in the Willis and Willingham cases shows that "over and over and over again, they repeated the mythology. ... These guys didn't know what they were talking about."
They also mention another case where the evidence was the same and the defendent released because arson experts concluded there was no evidence that the fire was intentionally set.
The report assessing the two cases notes that even though the interpretations of the physical evidence in the Willis case were the same as in the Willingham case, authorities in Texas have declined to say that Willingham was wrongly convicted and executed. The report said the "disparity of the outcomes in these two cases warrants a closer inspection."
In the letter to the commission, Scheck said, "Willis cannot be found `actually innocent' and Willingham executed based on the same scientific evidence."
If the government is going to impose a death penalty, they better be pretty damn sure that they are executing a guilty man. And using one expert that works for the state (who turned out to be incompetent) as the sole arson expert (no funds were provided to the defendent so he could hire his own expert) doesn't qualify as far as I'm concerned.
YOU DO!
But that wouldn't satisfy the spectators.
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.
I clicked through to the article - there's only one issue discussed - the question of crazed glass. Crazed glass alone is not evidence of an incendiary fire - but glass that crazes as a result of cold water sprayed on it from the outside is not the same as glass that crazes as the result of sudden and overwhelming heat. It's the sort of thing that experts can pick at to try to introduce reasonable doubt.
But challenging one item of evidence does not mean that the defendant is innocent. It doesn't even necessarily mean that the evidence is bad, just ambiguous. It can be considered in conjunction with other things.
However, what interests me is that the article says absolutely NOTHING about disproving the existence of pour trails. If the trial expert witness testified that accelerant was poured on the threshold, window ledges, and floors, that is easily shown by distinctive burn marks (which are usually photographed and exhibited to the jury). That would be absolutely conclusive of the use of accelerant (almost always gasoline) and I don't see what if anything the second-guessing experts could have said to contradict that. And I don't see how, if the accelerant was found in multiple places and the fire had multiple POIs, how anybody can reasonably contend that this was anything but a fire of incendiary origin.
But there's a lot of wishful thinking going on over at the Innocence Project.