Did Texas execute an innocent man?
 

CORSICANA – Texas might be on the verge of admitting it executed an innocent man who was tried, sentenced and put to death based on faulty forensics, according to a recent report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

It centers on a crime this city, an hour south of Dallas, can't forget.

"I've been doing law enforcement for approximately 37 years and this is one of the worst scenes I've ever seen," remembered Sgt. Jimmie Hensley of the Corsicana Police Department.

In December 1991, a fire swept through Cameron Todd Willingham's small home.

He escaped but his three young daughters did not.

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Very interesting. I wonder if this will have any effect on the state's stance on the death penalty (probably not).

Won't have any effect. My father did a murder case a while back. Got the conviction reversed on appeal and subsequently got an acquittal on the retrial.

I'm against the death penalty for a variety of reasons. Mostly though, because it's not handed out on what I perceive to be an equal or fair basis, i.e., more likely to be given to racial minorities and people of lower socio-economic status.

I look at it like this -- if they couldn't put Terry Nichols to death [co-conspirator for the OKC bombing], then pretty much no one else matches up. Not even close.

Not even Ted Bundy?

I'm ambivalent about the death penalty; like you said above it is handed out with a fair amount of bias, and is it really up to people to determine whether someone lives or dies?

I know, however, that the elimination of the death penalty would not be looked upon too favorably in Texas, as well as the Southern states. In certain parts of the country, it is here to stay.

It won't make a difference. It SHOULD make a difference, but it WON'T make a difference.

The death penalty is one of "those issues" - people have their minds pretty much made up by age 20, if not younger, and it's rare that those opinions ever change for the rest of their lives no matter what.

So this part of Texas might have executed an innocent man, but my part of Texas won't execute a guilty man pretty much days before he was suppose to be, because NOW he claims he's mentally retarded.

I seriously hope that a judge realizes this man is totally competent (although he has a wide array of mental health issues....retardation not one of them) so that he can be executed. No wonder he wants a judge from outside El Paso to take his case.

Am I missing something in the article?

I don't see anything that actually proves the guy's innocence, just something that suggests that forensic evidence might have been more faulty than previously thought.

It may create doubt for us, but maybe less so for the jury, since we don't really know why they convicted. We also don't know, based on anything we read here, I don't think, that the guy didn't start the fire and leave it to burn, even if he didn't use an accelerant.

I have mixed feeling about the death penalty, but "proving innocence" after conviction seems kind of complicated. I don't have any sense what other evidence other than the forensics were part of the prosecution here. What motive do people ever have to kill their kids?

Yeah, I've always wondered about that.

I support the death penalty for some crimes, not because I believe in retribution but because some people are bad for Civilization. Like serial killers, pedophiles, etc. Counciling and rehabilitation never/rarely work so just put the sick bastards out of their misery so that way at least they can't rape or kill any more people.

Kevin, I agree with you sort of. What if it's a serial killer who's been proven guilty? You don't think he/she should be put to death?

Should he be? Sure... he probably ought to be thrown to the lions or committed to some other sort of cruel sort of punishment.

But what you're talking about when you're talking about putting a man to death are thousands of man-hours of appeals both in terms of lawyers' time and judges' time. Time that IMHO, would be better spent elsewhere.

You're also talking about separate holding facilities, actual costs of executions, etc.

It's far cheaper to keep these prisoners for life than it is to put them to death because of all of these costs surrounding the death penalty. It's not like it has any redeeming qualities like preventing further homicides, etc.

My father's stepfather sat on the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals (the state's final appellate court for criminal cases). He once opined that the one thing he knew about the death penalty is that once it's administered, the recidivism rate was zero. Perhaps there's something to that, but as far as I can tell, its' just not worth it.

For people who want to learn more about the story, I believe The New Yorker published an extensive article on the subject. It goes into a lot of detail on how the expert came to his opinion, and why the process may have been flawed.

Agreed - I'm also against the death penalty, but I don't see this story making any difference in the way it's administered.

But that's the point - if the reliability of the evidence creates a greater doubt as to the defendant's guilt, that's a big deal. Remember too, it's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and it's the prosecution's burden to prove that (not the defendant's burden to refute it). If the scientific evidence was faulty, then that's a big problem....big enough to throw the whole result into question.

That said, again, I agree with Kevin that this case isn't going to make any difference.

I am against the death penalty in all instances for many reasons, including the one cited by Kevin. Additionally, I don't think it's up to humans to decide when other living, breathing, healthy humans should die. In doing so, I think we violate the same basic human rights that the murderer violated in the first place. Further, I think our penal system serves two purposes, the first being rehabilitation (if possible) and the second being keeping the general society safe from people who are dangerous. I don't really see it useful as a form of "punishment". The death penalty has been shown NOT to deter crime, so it is not useful in that regard. If someone did see the penal system as a means of punishment, then I would argue that I believe that being in isolation in prison for decades is far more punishing than giving the easy out of death. Perhaps that's because I have no fear of death. I have fear of a long, slow, suffering leading to death, but no fear of actually being dead. From a religious viewpoint, if the person has remorse in their heart, then God would forgive them and they'd end up in heaven earlier. If they didn't, they'd be going to Hell and what's a few decades on earth in isolation in a prison compared to eternity in Hell? Just a mere flash of time, relatively. And, if even one innocent person is killed, what are the ramifications for the people responsible for that murder? For those who argue that it's too expensive to house criminals for life in that manner, the reality is that it's even more expensive for those on death row because of the appeals, etc. Some argue there should not be appeals allowed, but that increases the risk of innocents being killed. I'd rather see us err on the side of caution in that regard.

I realize that's not a popular viewpoint and I realize that it also would conflict with believing that war is ever ok. And, I can honestly say that I struggle with that one a lot. It seems there are times that there is no other way to stop someone like Hitler from harming more and more people so it does seem to outweigh the consequences in that instance, only because the number of people involved in doing the crimes are so large that you couldn't arrest them all peacefully. I see it more as self defense or protecting someone weaker from certain death when there is absolutely no other way to do it.. a last resort, so to speak. I do have similar concerns about innocents being killed and I am very disturbed by all wars, even those that I understand are necessary. It creates a strong inner conflict for me between what I know is logical and my personal ethics and feelings.

Sure if we knew that the jury relied heavily on the forensic evidence in reaching their decision, it would be a big deal. I've only read the linked article, and it doesn't say much. ETA: and, assuming that we just going on the original article here: wouldn't you say that the burden of proof shifts quite a bit post conviction? At that point, a jury has decided guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and the convicted person has to establish that the new evidence would have yielded a different outcome, right?

Sometimes the forensic evidence is just one component of a much larger case. Problems with it alone doesn't really "prove innocence" unless that was all there was to the case or if what was faulty about it actually makes it impossible for the crime to have been committed as prosecuted.

The linked article in this thread doesn't really get it there.

ETA: the New Yorker article outlines a whole lot more wrong with this case and points to the validity of the title of the tread, but it says a whole lot more than just the original forensics being wrong: incompetent original defense, lying jailhouse snitches, indifferent/incompetent/negligent appeals and clemency board, etc.

"Despite what the state decides, justice has already been carried out."

i really dislike this statement. if he's innocent, then what justice? and does anyone know what would happen if it does turn out that the state did use faulty evidence?

Well, the standard for post-conviction relief is still less than it is for the original conviction...it's either a "preponderance of the evidence" standard (which is essentially greater than 50% chance that it's true) or "clear and convincing" standard (that it's substantially more likely than not that it's true). Both of those are lower standards than the "reasonable doubt" one utilitzed in the original conviction.

So, either way, the defendant doesn't have to show as much for post-conviction relief as the prosecution does in the original case.

The thing is, though, I think you're minimizing the importance of the scientific evidence. I've learned quite a bit about burn pattern analysis in my current job, and from what I understand in reading the article, the expert essentially said that the burn patterns were similar to those one would find in an arson case.

Practically speaking, the jury is going to put a lot of stock in an expert, especially in a case as emotionally-charged as this one. You're correct in that (as the New Yorker story points out) there were a ton of issues with the original defense. However, that should not minimize the effect of the scientific testimony on its own.