Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 2004. His con­vic­tion was based large­ly on foren­sic evi­dence of arson that both pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys now agree was seri­ous­ly flawed. Prosecutors have main­tained that oth­er evi­dence point­ed towards Willingham’s guilt, espe­cial­ly the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant who said Willingham con­fessed to the crime of mur­der­ing his chil­dren. Now accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive arti­cle by Maurice Possley for the Marshall Project and pub­lished in the Washington Post, new­ly uncov­ered let­ters and court records sug­gest that the infor­mant, Johnny Webb, received spe­cial treat­ment and a reduced sen­tence in exchange for his tes­ti­mo­ny. The jury was told that Webb had not received any deal in return for his tes­ti­mo­ny. However, the pros­e­cu­tor in Willingham’s case wrote to Webb in prison and con­tra­dict­ed those claims. He wrote, ​“We worked for a long time on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent lev­els, includ­ing the Governor’s Office, to get you released ear­ly in the rob­bery case.… Please under­stand that I am not indif­fer­ent or insen­si­tive to your dif­fi­cul­ties.” According to Webb, the pros­e­cu­tor told him, ​“If you help me, that rob­bery will dis­ap­pear … even if you’re con­vict­ed now, I can get it off of you lat­er.” Webb now says Willingham ​“nev­er told me noth­ing.” The pros­e­cu­tor also arranged for Webb to receive finan­cial assis­tance from a wealthy ranch­er who was inter­est­ed in help­ing at-risk young men.

The pros­e­cu­tor showed Webb pho­tos of the fire scene and per­suad­ed Webb of Willingham’s guilt: ​“He had me believ­ing 100 per­cent this dude was guilty — that’s why I tes­ti­fied,” Webb said. ​“The perks — they was will­ing to do any­thing to help me. No one has ever done that, so why wouldn’t I help them?” The arson sci­en­tists who tes­ti­fied against Willingham said the fire that killed his chil­dren was inten­tion­al­ly set. That tes­ti­mo­ny has since been debunked, with mod­ern inves­ti­ga­tion meth­ods sug­gest­ing that the fire was acci­den­tal. Though this evi­dence was pre­sent­ed before Willingham’s exe­cu­tion, he was denied a stay and was exe­cut­ed on February 17, 2004.

(M. Possley, ​“Fresh doubts over a Texas exe­cu­tion,” Washington Post, August 3, 2014). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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