Ernest Willis is like­ly to be the eighth per­son exon­er­at­ed and freed from Texas’s death row. He would be the 117th per­son freed nation­wide since 1973. Willis was sen­tenced to death 17 years ago for alleged­ly set­ting a house fire that killed two peo­ple. Now the state’s own fire expert, Gerald Hurst, has con­clud­ed: ​“There is not a sin­gle item of phys­i­cal evience in this case which sup­ports a find­ing of arson.” He labeled some of the ​“sci­en­tif­ic” evi­dence at Willis’s first tri­al as ​“absurd.” The dis­trict attor­ney in Fort Stockton, Texas, said that he would file a motion today request­ing the dis­missal of all charges. ​“I don’t have to decide whether he’s inno­cent or not, but I think that’s prob­a­bly a prob­a­bil­i­ty – that he is inno­cent,” said dis­trict attor­ney Ori White. A fed­er­al dis­trict judge in San Antonio had ruled in July that Willis must be either freed or giv­en a new tri­al, stat­ing that there is ​“strong rea­son to be con­cerned that Willis may be actu­al­ly inno­cent.” (San Antonio Express-News, Oct. 5, 2004). See DPIC’s new report on inno­cence. Note: All charges against Willis were dis­missed and he was for­mal­ly released on October 6. See Cases of Innocence #117.

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