200 Executions and Counting: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Cruel Death Tally

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2009.

Three years later, in the landmark case Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to execute prisoners who committed their crimes before the age of 18, commuting all such death sentences to life.

'Maybe this man was innocent': The Case of Cameron Todd Willingham

Beazely may have been guilty of the crime for which he was executed. But others have almost certainly not been.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004, for setting fire to his own one-story home, a blaze that killed his three young daughters (1-year-old twins and their 2-year-old sister). Willingham was convicted and sent to death row on a hastily executed arson investigation and jurors’ suspicion over the fact that he managed to escape the fire himself. But he maintained his innocence for years, right until he was strapped to the gurney.

"I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit,” he said in his final statement. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."

Ten months later, on Dec. 9, 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative article that cast serious doubt on Willingham's guilt.

"While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances," wrote staff reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. "According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed, and it is even possible the fire was accidental."

Among the experts was Louisiana Fire Chief Kendall Ryland, who said it "made me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation. … They executed this guy, and they've just got no idea -- at least not scientifically -- if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set."

"Did anybody know about this prior to his execution?" asked Dorinda Brokofsky, one of the jurors who sent him to die. "Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent."

The Willingham case "should shake the confidence of any Texan," says Scott Cobb of the Texas Moratorium Network. " ... The risk of executing an innocent person is very real in Texas because of the pace of executions, exemplified by Perry's record of 200. When you are executing that many people, the possibility of making a mistake is increased, and that is likely what happened in the Willingham case."

Frances Newton

Less than a year after the Tribune's investigation, 40-year-old Frances Newton became the third woman to be executed by the state of Texas since 1982 (and the first African American woman in the modern era) despite the strong possibility that she was innocent. Her trial attorney, Ronald Mock, was a notoriously incompetent defense lawyer (who was later suspended for said incompetence).

"For so many of the people whom Ron was appointed to represent, their death warrant was signed when the ink was dry on the appointment form,'' one defense lawyer told the Houston Chronicle.

The case against Newton (who was charged with killing her husband and children) was based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, including the fact that she had recently taken out life insurance policies on her husband and daughter. David Dow, head of the Texas Innocence Network, acknowledged at a clemency hearing for Newton that the evidence against her was "superficially compelling” -- but, he said, "appearances can be misleading.”

"From the beginning, Frances Newton has maintained her innocence,” reported Jordan Smith in the Austin Chronicle on Sept. 9, 2005, days before Newton’s execution. "She has also offered a plausible alternative theory of the crime -- a theory that neither police, prosecutors nor Newton's own trial attorney, the infamous and now-suspended Ronald Mock, have ever investigated.” According to Newton, her family members had been murdered at the behest of a drug dealer to whom her husband owed money.

Newton’s insistence on her innocence -- and the lack of physical evidence linking her to the crime was compelling enough to at least catch Perry’s attention.

See more stories tagged with: texas, death penalty, george w. bush, rick perry, capital punishment, timothy cole, terry lee hankins, napolean beazely, frances newton, cameron todd willingham, ronald mock, texas board of pardons

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