117^th Innocent Person Freed From Death Row

117^th INNOCENT PERSON FREED FROM DEATH ROW

Ernest Willis became the eighth per­son exon­er­at­ed from Texas’s death row on October 6, 2004, and the 117^th per­son freed nation­wide since 1973. Willis was sen­tenced to death 17 years ago for alleged­ly set­ting a house fire that killed two peo­ple.

U. S. District Judge Royal Ferguson held that the state had admin­is­tered med­ical­ly inap­pro­pri­ate antipsy­chot­ic drugs with­out Willis’ con­sent; that the state supressed evi­dence favor­able to Willis; and that Willis received inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at both the guilt and sen­tenc­ing phas­es of his tri­al. He ordered the state to either free Willis or retry him. The state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office declined to appeal, and pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against Willis.

The dis­trict attor­ney hired a new fire expert to exam­ine the evi­dence, and his con­clu­sion was that “[t]here is not a sin­gle item of phys­i­cal evience in this case which sup­ports a find­ing of arson.” (San Antonio Express-News, Oct. 5, 2004).

District Attorney Ori White, con­clud­ed that Willis ​“sim­ply did not do the crime. … I’m sor­ry this man was on death row for so long and that there were so many lost years.” (L. A. Times, Oct. 7, 2004).


Read more about Ernest Willis’ case.

See DPIC’s new report on inno­cence.