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The Execution of a Potentially Innocent Man Less Scandalous Than an Affair?

There's something really rotten in the state of Texas.
November 4, 2009  |  
 
 
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It's lucky for Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that he's not suspected of doing something truly shocking, like having an affair. Instead, it merely seems that he's helped cover up a homicide. Apparently that's not enough to make much of a national splash.

Last month, The New Yorker published a remarkable piece by David Grann about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for a crime that all the evidence suggests he didn't commit. In 1991, Willingham's house caught on fire, burning his three daughters to death. Ill-trained investigators accused Willingham of arson. At his trial, a family therapist who had never met Willingham was called as an expert witness and suggested that Willingham's heavy metal posters indicated that he might be a satanist.

Because Willingham couldn't afford decent representation, it was many years before a friend of his managed to get qualified experts to take a look at the case. Grann described the investigation conducted by Gerald Hurst, one of the country's most acclaimed fire investigators: "Hurst concluded that there was no evidence of arson, and that a man who had already lost his three children and spent twelve years in jail was about to be executed based on 'junk science.'" If Perry read the report, which was submitted just weeks before Willingham was executed, he didn't act on it, refusing to grant a stay of execution.

Grann wasn't the first to probe the Willingham case. Ten months after Willingham was put to death, The Chicago Tribune published an important investigation by Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. Willingham, they wrote, "was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental."

In 2005, the Texas Legislature established a nine-member Forensic Science Commission, which immediately started looking into Willingham's case, as well as the case of Ernest Ray Willis. Willis had also been sentenced to death in an arson case that Grann described as "freakishly similar" to Willingham's, but thanks largely to a good pro-bono attorney, he was set free after 17 years in prison. The Forensic Science Commission voted unanimously to hire Craig Beyler, another well-known arson expert, to write a report. Beyler submitted it in August, and it was a profoundly damning document.

The approach of Manuel Vasquez, the state deputy fire marshal in Willingham's case, was "hardly consistent with a scientific mindset and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics," Beyler wrote. In both the Willingham and the Willis case, the "investigators had poor understandings of fire science and failed to acknowledge or apply the contemporaneous understanding of the limitations of fire indicators. Their methodologies did not comport with the scientific method or the process of elimination."


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Michelle Goldberg is a senior correspondent at The American Prospect. She is also the author of Kingdom Coming and The Means of Reproduction.
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Rick Perry
Posted by: koolwoman on Nov 4, 2009 1:17 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Rick Perry is on his way out. Kay Bailey Hutchison will defeat him in a primary, and then ,hopefully the democratic candidate will defeat her, and then my state can rejoin the rest of the civilized world.

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» KINKY FRIEDMAN FOR GUBNER!!!! Posted by: moloko velocet
» Texas Governor's Race Posted by: moloko velocet
» RE: ick Perry Posted by: Indyman
» RE: ick Perry Posted by: Yvette0161
» Totally Corrupt Texas Posted by: billslm

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what do you expect
Posted by: timenotonmyside on Nov 4, 2009 2:23 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
from the state where george w bush learned all about governing.
look where it got us as a country, sitting pretty in TWO WARS, with no economy to sustain the american dream, but the top 1% keep getting richer

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» RE: what do you expect Posted by: robalb
» Wait are you blaming Iraq on Texas? Posted by: puf_almighty
» RE: what do you expect Posted by: shd1230

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The mainstream corporate media & other social engineers have indeed conditioned us to believe that
Posted by: JohnTruth2001 on Nov 4, 2009 3:58 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
an affair is far more scandalous than the state-sanctioned murder of an innocent man!!!

Get gov't out of the murder business both here at home & these goddamn continuing wars!!!

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Not to mention the scandal of disqualifying scientific experts...
Posted by: leafsong1 on Nov 4, 2009 5:45 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...as scientific experts based on whether their scientific opinion matches state policy. In the UK, such a thing is worth a headline; here, it is business as usual.

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RE: hi
Posted by: AMERICAN VETERAN on Nov 4, 2009 8:10 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I see that YOU have posted your pic there~~~~

AMY BROWN'S PORTRAIT

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darkmark
Posted by: darkmark on Nov 4, 2009 7:29 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
T and A will always trump life and death in the msm, as long as the life and death is that of no importance. to bad the guys name wasn't michael jackson.

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It's Texas, you expect rational?!?!?!?
Posted by: Spiritgirl on Nov 4, 2009 8:07 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"...like creationists at a school board meeting, Perry and his allies are heaping scorn on the many scientists who've weighted in on the case."

Puhlease, you expect rational - from the state that produce George W. Bush, a man that has failed at EVERYTHING he's "tried"! Come on, these ARE the creationist people, they're not "like" they are! They believe in the Judge Roy (hang'em high) Bean theory, hang first, and keep it moving!

Logical, rational thought is anathema that those people don't use! I realize that in the 21st century, we'd like to believe that everyone is rational, logical, and has some measure of "common sense", but stop that thought when it comes to Texas. Can you say dumbed down? Because Texas had to be the state that started it all, yes, a juicy affair outweighs a state sanctioned murder no matter how innocent the man was!

The sad part is many years ago the writer Molly Ivins said that something like this would happen, because Texans were stupid, how prescient she was, and I'm sure she'd be sad to know that! Hey TEXANS how about FIRING that idiot Gov. Perry?!

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The Rule of Law!
Posted by: cosmic.J on Nov 4, 2009 8:30 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
At what point are we going to stand up and demand accountability from our elected representatives. To use a governor's office to evade a serious transgression of the law should be immediate grounds for removal from office and prosecution. On both the state and federal level, mendacity has become the oder (order) of the day and the people's voice has been silenced by pervasive corporate despotism. 24/7 news manipulation has rendered the public at large incapable of action as the constant whirlwind of events induces cognitive dissonance and everything is easily swept under the rug, even something as shocking as 911, unless it is useful to the right-wing neo-nazis corporate republicans, who own and control airwave content! Does anyone remember that SOD. Rumsfield announced on 9.10.01 that 240 billion dollars was missing from the Pentagon budget office or that the missile that struck the Pentagon on 911 took out the entire office of the Dept. of Naval investigations tasked with tracing the missing funds? And there has never been any further mention of that investigation or the money trail it was exposing! Was Rumsfield's public remark about the need for a 'really big crisis' after his announcement of the missing funds prescience on his behalf or incredibly convenient, unworldly coincidence?

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» RE: The Rule of Law! Posted by: nikolai

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capital punishment
Posted by: vasumurti on Nov 4, 2009 12:27 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In a pamphlet entitled The Death Penalty: Cruel & Inhuman Punishment, Amnesty International USA reports that "the United States is the only western industrial nation which still practices capital punishment."

Moreover, the death penalty does not deter violent crime:

"Most people who murder do not see beyond their action; they kill quickly in moments of great fear or emotional stress and under the influence of drugs or alcohol. When the crime is premeditated, the individual rarely believes he or she will be apprehended or executed…in 1976, the United States Supreme Court found no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime. The United Nations came to similar conclusions."

According to Amnesty International USA, capital punishment tends to discriminate against minorities and the poor. In the United States since 1972, over 65 percent of the people on death row have been unskilled, service, or domestic workers, while 60 percent were unemployed at the time of their crimes.

"In the United States," reports Amnesty International USA, "blacks and other minorities face a much greater likelihood of execution than whites similarly charged...The victim’s race still factors heavily in determining the offender’s punishment. In Texas, blacks who kill whites are six times more likely to receive the death sentence than those with black victims. In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row."

Responding to the concept of "an eye for an eye," Amnesty International USA asks, "If capital punishment is appropriate because it takes a life for a life, why doesn’t the government also burn the arsonist’s home and rape the rapist? Because justice does not mean punishment that imitates the crime." Amnesty International USA states further that the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment.


United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once observed: "The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment… While police and law enforcement officials are the strongest advocates of capital punishment, the evidence is overwhelming that police are no safer in communities that retain the sanction than in those that have abolished it. It also is evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant, and the underprivileged members of society."

United States Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once argued against capital punishment, saying, "The calculated killing of a human being involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity."

Justice Brennan claimed the 8th Amendment bans "cruel and unusual punishment." Yet the 5th Amendment refers to "capital or otherwise infamous crime" and says no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

This clearly implies that persons can be deprived of their right to life, but only under due process of law. Capital punishment, therefore, is constitutional, and, ultimately, the only way death penalty opponents can correct this apparent injustice is through a Constitutional Amendment.

Attacking capital punishment, the early church father Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, wrote: "Christians are not allowed to kill, it is not permitted for the guiltless to put even the guilty to death."

Religious leaders throughout the world have taken a stand against capital punishment. Leading Jewish organizations, Protestant denominations, and the United States Catholic Bishops Conference all oppose the death penalty.

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» RE: capital punishment Posted by: richholland

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Proud Texans
Posted by: JTatSFA on Nov 4, 2009 12:53 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Texans are not just proud of their own stupidity, they are even more proud of the stupidity of of their politicians. Better still if they are also corrupt.

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» RE: Proud Texans Posted by: Ian MacLeod

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Why is this state still in the Union?
Posted by: bettyn on Nov 4, 2009 3:51 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Haven't these people caused enough trouble already? KICK THEM OUT!

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» What do you know about Texas? Posted by: puf_almighty

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capital punishment
Posted by: richholland on Nov 5, 2009 1:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Marquis the Sade is well known for his unpretty habits but he detested capital punishment.

Do you realise the execution of a person costs $ 1.000.000.???

Only perverts love it to see the execution, my advice have good sex.
And condem murderers to a diet of hamburgers and cola and Fox News.

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politicians benefit from being tough on crime
Posted by: whealeydj on Nov 7, 2009 10:45 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
particularly prosecutors but also judges,legislators and governors. There a few consequences when innocents are sentenced so there is little incentive to not over prosecute. I think we need to disbar overzealous prosecutors and garnish their salaries to pay for unjust imprisonment. as to capitol punishment I am generally against it but such cases cry out for life sentences for anyone who lied that resulted in unfair executions.

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