Texas to review arson case that ended in execution

[London Lass]

Texas to review arson case that ended in execution


A Texas panel will investigate whether a man executed for setting a fire that killed his three daughters actually started the blaze.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed Friday to review conclusions that Cameron Todd Willingham set the fire in 1991. He was executed in 2004.

It will be the 1st investigation by the commission, created in 2005 to look into allegations of forensic misconduct in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

The Innocence Project, a legal group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.

(source: Associated Press)

http://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/updates.html

[London Lass]

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."

No fatal mistakes confirmed

Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, 1,020 men and women have been executed, with more than one-third--362--put to death in Texas.

Although more than 100 people have been released from Death Row in the U.S. during that time, no government authority has concluded that an innocent person was executed.

The arson report singled out the testimony at Willingham's trial of Manuel Vasquez, a deputy state fire marshal, who said he found numerous indicators in the debris that he interpreted as evidence that Willingham intentionally set the fire.

"Each and every one of the `indicators' listed by Mr. Vasquez means absolutely nothing," the report states.

Scheck said copies of the report have been sent to the nine members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission with a request that the commission open an investigation of Willingham's prosecution. The commission was created last year to investigate allegations of "professional negligence or misconduct that would substantially affect the integrity of the results of a forensic analysis."

In addition to the Willingham case, the report examined the arson prosecution of Ernest Ray Willis, who was charged with the arson-murders of two women in Iraan, Texas, on June 11, 1986.

In 2004--a few months after Willingham was executed--Willis, who was facing the death penalty in a retrial of his case, was released and the case dismissed after 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."

Further, Scheck asked that the commission commence a systemwide review of arson cases, saying Texas leads the nation in the percentage of people incarcerated for arson convictions, many of which undoubtedly are based on the same sort of invalid science cited in the Willis and Willingham cases.

House full of smoke

Two days before Christmas in 1991, Willingham's wife left their house to pay bills and shop for Christmas gifts for their 1-year-old twins, Karmon and Kameron, and their 2-year-old daughter, Amber.

Willingham testified that he was awakened about an hour later by Amber's cries for help and found the house full of smoke. Willingham escaped, but the children did not.

At Willingham's trial, Vasquez and Corsicana Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg testified that the fire was deliberately set and pointed to numerous "indicators" as proof. One of those indicators was "crazed glass," a phenomenon that they said was caused by a fire that burned so hot and so fast that it could only have been caused by an accelerant.

But the new report notes that scientific testing has established that crazed glass can be caused by spraying water on hot glass; in effect, the act of extinguishing a fire was being used to prove that the fire was an arson.

When he was strapped to the gurney to be executed, Willingham said, "I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit."

The report urges authorities to examine other cases as well.

"To the extent that there are still investigators in Texas and elsewhere, who [misinterpret fires], there will continue to be serious miscarriages of justice," it states.

Touting proven science

One of the four authors of the report, John Lentini, a private fire investigator who first examined the Willingham case at the request of the Tribune, is a leading proponent of grounding arson investigation in proven science.

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."

One member of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Austin attorney Sam Bassett, said Tuesday that the panel has yet to schedule its first meeting and is awaiting legislative approval for funding for travel and other expenses.

He said that based on reading some of the report, "certainly this is a potential nightmare scenario that everybody talks about--the execution of an innocent person. I would hope that this would merit our attention."

Eugenia Willingham, Willingham's stepmother, who lives in Ardmore, Okla., attended the news conference as well. She wept as she said, "We want the truth to be known in Todd's case. We want to keep this from ever happening again."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-060502willingham,0,6033976.story?page=1

[London Lass]

Forensic Science Commission will investigate science behind Cameron Willingham’s capital arson conviction
Published by Scott Henson at 9:47 am under Criminal Justice, Forensics

The Texas Forensic Science Commission met in Houston last Friday and voted to take on their first independent investigation involving an alleged wrongful conviction stemming from flawed forensic science - the case of Cameron Willingham, executed for an arson crime in which the arson investigators on the case later admitted they’d relied on flawed science for their conclusions. Reported AP (Aug. 15):

A state panel has voted to investigate whether a man executed for setting a fire that killed his three daughters actually started the blaze.The Texas Forensic Science Commission on Friday agreed to review investigators’ conclusions that Cameron Todd Willingham set a fire at his family’s home in Corsicana two days before Christmas in 1991. He was executed in 2004.

The commission’s decision came after the Innocence Project, a legal group that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions, requested the case be reviewed. Trial evidence suggested an accelerant was used to start the deadly blaze. But the Innocence Project says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.

This is the first investigation to be conducted by the commission, created in 2005 to look into allegations of forensic misconduct.

For more background on the Cameron Willingham case, see this excellent Chicago Tribune feature analyzing forensic errors and this independent peer review (pdf) sponsored by the national Innocence Project of the science in Willingham’s case.

More than 800 people are in Texas prisons over arson charges, and dozens if not hundreds of older arson convictions were based on forensic science that’s no longer considered valid. Thus one hopes the Forensic Science Commissions review of the Willingham case could lead to re-evaluating many other cases where shoddy forensic science led to false convictions in arson cases.

MORE: Read a reaction to the FSC’s decision and a prior post on the case in a DailyKos diary from the son of one of the investigators who participated in the above-mentioned peer review. At Talk Left, see also the discussion in the comments between defenders of the original conviction and the Kos diarist. See also coverage from the Houston Chronicle.

http://ipoftexas.org/forensic-science-commission-will-investigate-science-behind-cameron-willinghams-capital-arson-conviction/

[packy]

http://www.truthinjustice.org/willingham.htm

CORSICANA, Texas -- Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber earlier this year, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, Cameron Todd Willingham declared his innocence one last time.

"I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."

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. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.

Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction.

The author of the report, Gerald Hurst, reviewed additional documents, trial testimony and an hourlong videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene at the Tribune's request last month. Three other fire investigators--private consultants John Lentini and John DeHaan and Louisiana fire chief Kendall Ryland--also examined the materials for the newspaper.

"There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire," said Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist who has investigated scores of fires in his career. "It was just a fire."

[packy]

Well worth reading.

A Reporter at Large
Trial by Fire
Did Texas execute an innocent man?
by David Grann
September 7, 2009

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

[packy]

http://volokh.com/2009/10/01/is-gov-perry-covering-up-the-execution-of-an-innocent-man/

The Texas Forensic Science Commission was preparing to review the evidence that led to the conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the alleged arson and murder of his own children. This New Yorker article makes a persuasive case that Wilingham was innocent, and convicted on the basis of highly questionable forensic science. (The word “quackery” comes to mind.) Although serious questions had been raised about the forensic evidence upon which Willingham was convicted prior to his execution, Gov. Perry denied a requested stay.

[awakening2lite]

Texas resists family's effort to clear executed man's name

November 9, 2009 10:03 p.m. EST


Ardmore, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Cameron Todd Willingham's family here in Oklahoma never believed he set the fire that killed his three daughters.
"We could not even imagine it," his cousin, Patricia Cox, recounted recently. "That was completely ludicrous to us."


But 16 days after the fire, Willingham was arrested. And within a year, he was on death row. On February 17, 2004, he was strapped to a gurney in a Texas prison and given a lethal injection, proclaiming his innocence to the end.


The story of how Willingham -- Todd, to his family -- went from a home on a shady street in Ardmore to the death chamber is a tale of science and skull tattoos, of last-minute hopes raised and dashed. It is a story wrapped up in allegations that the governor who let the execution go forward is now trying to derail an investigation into whether Texas put an innocent man to death.


And in Ardmore, where Willingham's baby shoes still sit on a desk in the house where he grew up, the family that fought to save his life is still trying to clear his name.


"It's not over," Cox's sister, Judy Cavnar, said. "This is a long way from being over."

The fire started about 10 a.m. on December 23, 1991. Willingham, then 23, was asleep in the wood-frame home in Corsiana, Texas, that he shared with his wife and children. Stacy had gone out to buy presents for 2-year-old Amber Kuykendall and the 1-year-old twins, Karmon and Kameron Willingham.


Money was tight

Times were tough for the couple. Todd, who'd worked as a mechanic, at an auto-parts store and for a glass company, was unemployed and the couple was behind on bills.


Willingham told investigators that Amber woke him up when the fire broke out, and he told her to get out of the house. He said he then crawled on the floor into the children's room to find the twins, but failed.


Christmas was spent making funeral arrangements. Stacy's family blamed Todd for the children's deaths "because he couldn't get them out," said his stepmother, Eugenia Willingham. "There was so much friction in the air."


People in Corsicana took up a collection to help the family. Donations helped pay for gravestones and a plot in an old cemetery downtown. But to police, the grieving father was starting to look like a murderer.


He told different stories about how he escaped the fire. He said he thought Amber was in the children's room, which had a baby gate at the door, but her body was found on his and Stacy's bed. His injuries didn't match what he told investigators about his efforts to rescue the girls. Witnesses at the scene said Willingham wouldn't go back into the house once he escaped, but took care to move his car away from the burning home.


"The actions he took were not the actions of someone with a kid burning up and him right outside," said Sgt. Jimmie Hensley, the lead investigator for Corsicana police.

Despite Willingham's complaints about a faulty microwave and squirrels in the attic, firefighters found no sign of electrical issues that might have caused the fire. A space heater in the children's bedroom was off, and the gas line that fed it had no signs of a leak. But they did find burn patterns on the walls and floor that were considered signs some sort of flammable liquid was used to start the blaze, as well as patterns of cracked glass that were considered a sign of arson.


Meanwhile, detectives began to hear about Todd's fights with Stacy, including claims he once beat her in order to cause a miscarriage. Police said he told his mother-in-law that he believed he would be blamed for the deaths because of "unusual marks" on Amber's neck.


Willingham was arrested January 8, 1992, the day before his 24th birthday. He told his stepmother, "I don't have a chance down here."


'He didn't go quietly'

Todd was an outsider in Corsicana, a town about 60 miles south of Dallas. Stacy's family had deep roots there, and he'd moved there to be with her after a stretch in an Oklahoma boot camp for a probation violation.


As a teenager, Todd had started huffing paint and dropped out of school. He'd been on probation for burglary, theft and driving under the influence and did a few days in a county jail for carrying a concealed weapon.


"He was certainly defiant and rebellious, as teenagers sometimes are in high school," Cox said. But his probation officer "took a special interest in him. I think she saw in him, too, that he was a child of inopportunity."


Todd's father, Gene, ran an auto salvage yard in Ardmore, an oil patch town with a sharp line between rich and poor. He took custody of the 13-month-old boy after his ex-wife abandoned him as an infant, and he and Eugenia raised him.


Eugenia Willingham acknowledges that Todd and Stacy had a "stormy" relationship, and that Todd told differing stories in the days after the fire.


But she added, "I don't think he really knew what he did. I'm sure he was in shock." And before his execution, he admitted he hadn't gone back inside after his first attempt to find the children.


"He just didn't want people to think he didn't try," she said. "Of course, they thought that anyway."


Willingham's August 1992 trial lasted three days. Prosecutors had offered him a chance to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but he refused.


The Willingham family raised money for his attorneys and for a new suit for the trial, only to hear prosecutors mock Todd as "a baby-killer dressed up like a lawyer," Eugenia said. Witnesses called him a "sociopath" incapable of rehabilitation and suggested the tattoo of a skull on his left shoulder, combined with his fondness for heavy-metal bands like Iron Maiden, indicated a bent toward Satanism -- a claim that still rubs the family raw.


Quick verdict

The jury took less than an hour to find him guilty of capital murder. Eleven and a half years later, his appeals exhausted and pleas for clemency denied, he was headed for the death chamber. His relatives last saw him less than an hour before the execution.


"He told us he had 55 minutes until he'd be a free man," Cavnar said. But when a prison doctor came to check on him, Todd told him, "I'm not going to die on you. You're going to have to kill me."


After the execution, a prison chaplain told the family, "Todd went, but he didn't go quietly."


Stacy was the only one of his relatives to view his death. Though she stood by him during the trial, forcing prosecutors to question her as a hostile witness, she filed for divorce soon after he went to death row.



Eventually, Willingham's family said, she came to believe he was guilty -- and as his execution drew near, she refused to allow him to be buried alongside the children.


Witnesses said Todd died cursing her, saying he hoped she would "rot in hell."


"I am an innocent man," he declared, "convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."
His body was cremated. Despite Stacy's wishes, his family snuck into Corsicana to scatter some of his ashes on the girls' graves.


"We weren't in the cemetery 10 minutes before everyone knew it," Eugenia Willingham said.


Efforts to reach Willingham's ex-wife for this story were unsuccessful. But in a statement issued to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in October, she said Willingham confessed to killing the girls during a visit about two weeks before his execution.


"He said if I didn't have my girls I couldn't leave him and that I could never have Amber or the twins with anyone else but him," her statement reads. "He told me he was sorry and that he hoped that I could forgive him one day."


She had never reported that confession before, and told the Corsicana Daily Sun in 2004 that her ex-husband was sticking to his account of the fire. And Willingham's family disputes the account, his stepmother said.


Cox said the Willinghams have tried to be sensitive to Stacy's family -- but "there's a loss up here not of three lives, but four."


Governor's shakeup draws new scrutiny

In the years between Willingham's trial and execution, Cox tried to get television crime shows interested in her cousin's case. One show, in 2002, featured Gerald Hurst, a chemist and explosives expert in Austin, Texas.
"All I had was a town," she said. "So I got on the Internet and I sent six letters out to attorneys who handled arson cases."


One of those lawyers responded with a phone number for Hurst, but Cox said no one answered when she called -- "Not even voice mail." But Todd still had appeals, and it "wasn't critical," she added. After several more unsuccessful efforts, she moved on.


By late 2003, it was critical. The U.S. Supreme Court refused the last of his appeals. His execution date was set for February 2004. Cox had started lobbying the governor's office for a reprieve, and she decided to make one "last desperate attempt" to reach Hurst in early January 2004.


"I just simply picked up the phone again, and he actually answered. I couldn't believe it. I think I was speechless."


With just weeks remaining before the execution, Hurst agreed to look into the case. He concluded that the indicators investigators pointed to as evidence of arson had been rendered obsolete since 1991, and "would be considered invalid in light of current knowledge."


The family was elated by the report. But, Cox said, "It got better before it got worse."


Hurst's report went to the state Court of Criminal Appeals. In a two-page order the day of Willingham's execution, it ruled the report "does not meet the requirements for consideration" as new evidence of innocence.


It also went to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which denied a request for clemency, and to Gov. Rick Perry, who could grant only a 30-day stay of execution without the parole board's authorization. None moved to stop Todd's execution.


"We just ran out of time," Cox said. "Todd ran out of time. We all ran out of time."


Innocence Project weighs in

But since 2004, two more reports have backed up Hurst's findings. The first was delivered in 2006 by the Innocence Project, which seeks to clear prison inmates it believes were wrongly convicted. That led the Texas Forensic Science Commission to mount its own investigation.


The commission hired Craig Beyler, chairman of the International Association for Fire Safety Science, to review the evidence against Willingham. And Beyler's report, filed in August, determined that the finding of arson in the Willingham fire "could not be sustained." The investigators who testified the fire was deliberately set "had poor understandings of fire science and failed to acknowledge or apply the contemporaneous understanding of the limitations of fire indicators," it states.


In a 21-page rebuttal, the Corsicana Fire Department says it stands by its original conclusions. Hensley dismissed the reviews as "Monday-morning quarterbacking" by experts unfamiliar with all the evidence.


"I'm firmly a believer that justice was served," Hensley said.


But opponents of capital punishment say the Beyler report has brought Texas eyeball-to-eyeball with the uncomfortable prospect of admitting it had put an innocent man to death. And they say Perry -- a Republican facing a tough primary challenge in March -- blinked.
Report to Texas Forensic Science Commission (http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/11/09/rpt.tx.forensic.willes.willingham.anaylsis.final.p df) | Fire department response (http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/11/09/willingham.corsicana.response.pdf) (PDFs)


Shake-up stalls probe

Two days before the Forensic Science Commission was to question Beyler in a public forum, the governor replaced its chairman and two other members whose terms were up. That forced the commission to delay the hearing so new members could read up on the case, and no new date has been set. Perry has since replaced a third member of the commission.


The governor defended the replacements as routine, and says he remains confident of Willingham's guilt. He told reporters in October that Willingham was a "monster" whose conviction was upheld repeatedly by the courts.


But the shakeup has become an issue in his re-election campaign, and a state Senate committee has a hearing scheduled Tuesday to question the Forensic Science Commission's new chairman about his plans for the case.
"I want a status report," state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. "He's been there a month."


Back in Ardmore, the Willingham family has learned some hard lessons. One is that there's a legal system in America -- "not necessarily a justice system," Cavnar said.


Now that the Texas investigation is in limbo, Cox said she's choosing her words carefully. The investigation "meant everything to us," she said. "We're a little fearful that it's not going to happen."


But she said they're still determined to press the issue -- not just for Todd, but for others on death row who might be in the same circumstance.
Said Cox: "If you don't think it can happen to you, you're wrong."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/07/willingham.texas.execution.probe/