INNOCENCE: ​“Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?”

In a thor­ough and pen­e­trat­ing arti­cle pub­lished in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers fur­ther evi­dence that Texas prob­a­bly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 2004. Grann care­ful­ly exam­ines all the evi­dence that was used in the two-day tri­al in 1992 to con­vict Cameron Todd Willingham of mur­der by arson of his three young chil­dren. It is now well estab­lished through a series of inves­ti­ga­tions by oth­er fire experts that the foren­sic evi­dence of arson pre­sent­ed at tri­al had no sci­en­tif­ic basis and should not have led to Willingham’s con­vic­tion. Another piece of evi­dence used at tri­al was the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant who said that Willingham had con­fessed to the crime, despite the fact that he had always main­tained his inno­cence and even refused a plea bar­gain to avoid the death penal­ty. The informer even­tu­al­ly received ear­ly release, tried to recant his tes­ti­mo­ny, and is now no longer sure what he heard. He also suf­fers from men­tal dis­or­ders. Willingham’s lawyers thought he was 100% guilty and offered no rebut­tal expert to ques­tion the find­ing of arson. At the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, the pros­e­cu­tion put on a psy­chi­a­trist, Dr. James Grigson, who made a liv­ing help­ing to send defen­dants to death row by tes­ti­fy­ing to their future dan­ger­ous­ness with­out even inter­view­ing them. Dr. Grigson said that Willingham was an ​“extreme­ly severe sociopath,” words sim­i­lar to those he used to describe Randall Dale Adams, who was even­tu­al­ly exon­er­at­ed fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Morris, por­trayed in the film ​“A Thin Blue Line.”

The Innocence Project in New York, which has inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gat­ed the Willingham case, issued a press release in which its co-direc­tor, Barry Scheck, stat­ed, ​“The New Yorker​’s inves­ti­ga­tion lays out this case in its total­i­ty and leads to the inescapable con­clu­sion that Willingham was inno­cent. There can no longer be any doubt that an inno­cent per­son has been exe­cut­ed. The ques­tion now turns to how we can stop it from hap­pen­ing again. As long as our sys­tem of jus­tice makes mis­takes – includ­ing the ulti­mate mis­take – we can­not con­tin­ue exe­cut­ing peo­ple.” The Texas Forensic Science Commission has received a report from its sci­ence con­sul­tant echo­ing the con­clu­sion from oth­er experts that Willingham was con­vict­ed on the basis of unsound tes­ti­mo­ny. They will issue a final report on evi­dence in the future.

(D. Grann, ​“Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?” The New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2009; Press Release, The Innocence Project, Aug. 31, 2009; pho­to: fam­i­ly pho­to of Willingham and daugh­ter Amber from the Chicago Tribune, which also inves­ti­gat­ed the case). See DPIC’s lat­est pod­cast on Innocence. See also DPIC’s Innocence pages and list of those exon­er­at­ed from death row since 1973.