David Grann's chilling story of a wrongful execution.

main

The New Yorker's David Grann on the wrongful execution of a Texas inmate.

In a blockbuster New Yorker piece this week, David Grann persuasively demonstrates that in 2004, Texas executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. It is chilling reading. Whatever you think about the death penalty, you can't want it to misfire. So how did we get here, to a legal regime in which a junk-science arson investigation was never questioned by indifferent defense lawyers, as Grann portrays them, nor by unsympathetic judges, parole board members, and Texas Governor Rick Perrry's office?

My answer starts with the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which President Bill Clinton signed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings. The Supreme Court also gets a share of the blame for the noose-tightening way in which it interpreted AEDPA. Justice Antonin Scalia has led this charge and went so far as to write recently, in the appeal of Troy Davis, “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” But more centrist justices also lined up on the side of "finality"—the idea that there is value in closing the doors of due process. Grann quotes Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote in a 1993 case that the "execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event." But in that case, Herrera v. Collins, O'Connor ruled against the defendant. And that is one of a string of rulings from her that made it more and more difficult for defendants to bring to light new evidence and to get the courts to pay attention to flaws in their convictions. Cameron Todd Willingham is dead because of a bad and abstruse law and a series of even worse legal rulings from our high court.

Photograph of death penalty protesters by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Tags: antonin scalia, cameron todd willingham, death penalty, Sandra Day O'Connor

Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.

Comments

"Cameron Todd Willingham: Media Meltdown & the Death Penalty"

By: dudleysharp | Wed, 10/07/2009 - 02:13

From Dudley Sharp, contact info below

1) "Cameron Todd Willingham: Media Meltdown & the Death Penalty:
"Trial by Fire: Did Texas execute an innocent man?", by David Grann
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/10/04/cameron-todd-willingham-media-me...

This was written and released prior to the Corsicana Fire Marshall's report, below:

2) EXCLUSIVE: City report on arson probe:
State panel asks for city response in Willingham case
http://www.corsicanadailysun.com/news/local_story_276222736.html

3) No Doubts
http://www.corsicanadailysun.com/thewillinghamfiles/local_story_25018065...

For a collection of articles, go to:

Corsicana Daily Sun, The Willingham Files
http://www.corsicanadailysun.com/thewillinghamfiles

OTHER REPORTS: There is the potential for, at least, 3 more, official, reports on this case: the Texas Fire Marshall's office, which will give an official and requested reply, the Corsicana Police Dept. and Navarro County District Attorney's office, both of which, I speculate, may only contribute to the TFM report, but could issue their own reports.

There is an official "report" which, it appears, few have paid attention to - the trial transcript.

I find that rather important because, at least five persons, who were involved with the trial, the prosecutor, defense attorney, two surviving fire investigators and a juror have all voiced support for the verdict, still, in the light of the criticism of the arson forensics.

One of those original fire investigators is, now, an active certified arson expert.

Dudley Sharp
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas

Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.

A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج

By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 07:11

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج تحميل برامج نوكيا برامج
تحميل ماسنجر تحميل موبايل موقع دليل مواقع

All our failings on display

By: Foobs | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 08:18

Expert witnesses that are experts at convincing a jury instead of understanding the facts. Public defenders that are too busy and/or incompetent to give adequate representation. The universal assumption that the accused is guilty (so the lack of remorse is indicative of sociopathy). Investigators with more interest in proving the accusation than determining the truth. Supreme Court justices whose ideas about the criminal justice system are based on fantasy instead of reality (take Scalia out of his band of competence and the man is an idiot).

The American justice system is anything but just. It is worst for the poor, but any sane person should be afraid that misfortune will put them on that freight train's tracks.

10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty - Oct 24 Austin

By: scottcobb | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 04:37

If you are shocked that Texas executed a person who was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, then join us in Austin at the Texas Capitol on October 24, 2009 for the 10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.

http://marchforabolition.org

At the 7th Annual March in 2006, the family of Todd Willingham attended and delivered a letter to Governor Perry that said in part:

“We are the family of Cameron Todd Willingham. Our names are Eugenia Willingham, Trina Willingham Quinton and Joshua Easley. Todd was an innocent person executed by Texas on February 17, 2004. We have come to Austin today from Ardmore, Oklahoma to stand outside the Texas Governor’s Mansion and attempt to deliver this letter to you in person, because we want to make sure that you know about Todd’s innocence and to urge you to stop executions in Texas and determine why innocent people are being executed in Texas.”

“Please ensure that no other family suffers the tragedy of seeing one of their loved ones wrongfully executed. Please enact a moratorium on executions and create a special blue ribbon commission to study the administration of the death penalty in Texas. A moratorium will ensure that no other innocent people are executed while the system is being studied and reforms implemented.”

Yeah, it's a tough one.

By: you know it is | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 00:51

Yeah, it's a tough one. Clearly the expert witnesses who were arson investigators were completely wrong and full of it, but that's kind of just a constant risk it's hard to do anything about except try harder not to be wrong (i.e. by definition you don't know when you're mistaken). Not that I'm saying the arson investigators were blameless, but what can you do about that sort of problem?

However, reading the Wikipedia link about Herrera v. Collins, it seems clear that the Supreme Court intended that the clemency committee represented the safeguard against miscarriages of justice and the opportunity for innocent people to plead their innocence. The clemency committee is supposed to be the place you can go if you are wrongly convicted. And the New Yorker story certainly makes one consider the possibility that the clemency committee in this case did not make a good faith effort to discharge this duty.

Very very frightening

By: tinyredcar | Wed, 09/02/2009 - 13:43

I just read this piece about an hour ago, and was stunned. Not really so much that the local investigators bungled the arson investigation (although it kinda boggles my mind that they would leap to the conclusion of arson in a house fire), but that when the fire expert, Hurst, wrote the report pretty much rejecting everything the initial investigators concluded about the causes of the fire and concluded that it was accidental, nobody on the "Clemency" committee even bothered to read it. Seems that they were so eager to send another "criminal" to his death that somebody else could have come forward and claimed that he/she had started the fire and they would have ignored that too. This whole story makes a mockery of the justice system.

David Grann's Chilling Story of a Wrongful Execution

Comments

"Cameron Todd Willingham: Media Meltdown & the Death Penalty"

By: dudleysharp | Wed, 10/07/2009 - 02:13

تحميل برامج تحميل برنامج

By: beckham_250 | Sun, 09/20/2009 - 07:11

All our failings on display

By: Foobs | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 08:18

10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty - Oct 24 Austin

By: scottcobb | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 04:37

Yeah, it's a tough one.

By: you know it is | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 00:51

Very very frightening

By: tinyredcar | Wed, 09/02/2009 - 13:43

DoubleX

The Root

The Big Money

Good Morning America

Washington Post

Newsweek