Strictly speaking, you can’t prove that Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent. All we can say is that there’s absolutely no plausible evidence that he set his house on fire and burned his three kids to death.
But the fire investigation team put a case together that would persuade a jury, and everyone around Willingham — his neighbors, the witnesses, even eventually his ex-wife — became convinced he was guilty. Without any conscious lying, or so I assume, people’s memories were recreated in a way that made Willingham seem guilty.
A strength of David Grann’s fascinating New Yorker article is that he does show how the case for arson was persuasive:
[Fogg] was soon joined on the case by one of the state’s leading arson sleuths, a deputy fire marshal named Manuel Vasquez, who has since died. Short, with a paunch, Vasquez had investigated more than twelve hundred fires. […] Vasquez, who had previously worked in Army intelligence, had several maxims of his own. One was “Fire does not destroy evidence—it creates it.”[…]
As he and Fogg removed some of the clutter, they noticed deep charring along the base of the walls. Because gases become buoyant when heated, flames ordinarily burn upward. But Vasquez and Fogg observed that the fire had burned extremely low down, and that there were peculiar char patterns on the floor, shaped like puddles.
Vasquez’s mood darkened. He followed the “burn trailer”—the path etched by the fire—which led from the hallway into the children’s bedroom. Sunlight filtering through the broken windows illuminated more of the irregularly shaped char patterns. A flammable or combustible liquid doused on a floor will cause a fire to concentrate in these kinds of pockets, which is why investigators refer to them as “pour patterns” or “puddle configurations.”
The fire had burned through layers of carpeting and tile and plywood flooring. Moreover, the metal springs under the children’s beds had turned white—a sign that intense heat had radiated beneath them. Seeing that the floor had some of the deepest burns, Vasquez deduced that it had been hotter than the ceiling, which, given that heat rises, was, in his words, “not normal.”
Perception is everything. Vasquez and Fogg perceived themselves as smart, experienced investigators applying real knowledge of how fires worked. And once they had convinced the cops, everyone else began perceiving Willingham as guilty, as well. Memories were rebuilt and altered to conform to the new consensus:
In Diane Barbee’s initial statement to authorities, she had portrayed Willingham as “hysterical,” and described the front of the house exploding. But on January 4th, after arson investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder, Barbee suggested that he could have gone back inside to rescue his children, for at the outset she had seen only “smoke coming from out of the front of the house”—smoke that was not “real thick.”
An even starker shift occurred with Father Monaghan’s testimony. In his first statement, he had depicted Willingham as a devastated father who had to be repeatedly restrained from risking his life. Yet, as investigators were preparing to arrest Willingham, he concluded that Willingham had been too emotional (“He seemed to have the type of distress that a woman who had given birth would have upon seeing her children die”); and he expressed a “gut feeling” that Willingham had “something to do with the setting of the fire.”
And, of course, a jailhouse informant told the cops that Willingham had confessed the crime to him. Jailhouse informants are involved in a huge proportion of the false convictions I’ve read about; they’re notoriously dishonest, but that doesn’t keep prosecutors from using them.
When I recently asked Webb, who was released from prison two years ago, about the turnabout and why Willingham would have confessed to a virtual stranger, he said that he knew only what “the dude told me.” After I pressed him, he said, “It’s very possible I misunderstood what he said.” Since the trial, Webb has been given an additional diagnosis, bipolar disorder. “Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy,” he said. “My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.” He paused, then said, “The statute of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn’t it?”
And that was the case against Willingham.
But it turns out, a lot of the things experienced arson investigators believe are nonsense; it’s a nice theory backed up with some common sense, but it’s contradicted by scientific experiments. It’s intuitive to think that puddle patterns on the floor prove that someone poured flammable liquid on the floor to set the fire. It makes sense. But it’s not true. Grann describes an experimental fire set by arson investigators:
After the fire was extinguished, the investigators inspected the hallway and living room. On the floor were irregularly shaped burn patterns that perfectly resembled pour patterns and puddle configurations. It turned out that these classic signs of arson can also appear on their own…
All the other evidence of arson turned out to be based on myths about how fire behaves — myths that arson investigators probably honestly believed were science.
For me, the blame for Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution lie with the Texas parole board, and with then-governor Rick Perry.
The vote was unanimous. Reaves could not offer an explanation: the board deliberates in secret, and its members are not bound by any specific criteria. The board members did not even have to review Willingham’s materials, and usually don’t debate a case in person; rather, they cast their votes by fax—a process that has become known as “death by fax.” Between 1976 and 2004, when Willingham filed his petition, the State of Texas had approved only one application for clemency from a prisoner on death row. A Texas appellate judge has called the clemency system “a legal fiction.” Reaves said of the board members, “They never asked me to attend a hearing or answer any questions.”
The Innocence Project obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, all the records from the governor’s office and the board pertaining to Hurst’s report. “The documents show that they received the report, but neither office has any record of anyone acknowledging it, taking note of its significance, responding to it, or calling any attention to it within the government,” Barry Scheck said. “The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”
But I also blame the voters, who find this system acceptable, and if anything seem to prefer it. Not that they want innocent people put to death, exactly. But they want a system that executes people surely, and without any namby-pamby concerns about new evidence or due process. They don’t want to elect anyone who seems “soft on crime,” and in practice softness on crime means questioning the death penalty, or its application, in any way at all.
Nothing in the system would reward a governor for appointing a board who carefully considers claims of innocence. Nothing in the system would reward a prosecutor who declined to use jailhouse snitches. And nothing in the system would reward a prosecutor, or a police chief, who declined to use arson investigators who don’t actually have any scientific basis for their beliefs about evidence and arson.
Nothing in our system will in any way punish a single one of the many officials who made the decisions that led to an almost certainly innocent man’s execution.
Cameron Todd Willingham wasn’t a saint; he beat his wife, among other crimes. But there’s no reason to believe he set a fire to burn his children to death. And he was executed. There’s something wrong with that. But I doubt it’ll ever be fixed.
I almost can’t believe some of the things that go on in the US ‘justice’ system — not as slip-ups, but as regular, sanctioned procedure. It’s absolutely barbaric that any nation continues to execute people, and the US continues in spite of fervent international condemnation. Why can’t Americans see that this practice is nothing short of evil?
And to think some people ask me why I won’t consider working in the US, even for higher pay and more opportunities.
I think you should revise the title of your post to Texas Executed AnOTHER Innocent Man.
I don’t mean that to sound callous, but 424 Executions since 1984 when they really got on a roll executing people … Orwell nailed the date on that one.
This is why I don’t support the death penalty. Humans make mistakes. And in death penalty cases, mistakes can’t be fixed.
If you are shocked that Texas executed a person who was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, then join us in Austin at the Texas Capitol on October 24, 2009 for the 10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.
http://marchforabolition.org
At the 7th Annual March in 2006, the family of Todd Willingham attended and delivered a letter to Governor Perry that said in part:
“We are the family of Cameron Todd Willingham. Our names are Eugenia Willingham, Trina Willingham Quinton and Joshua Easley. Todd was an innocent person executed by Texas on February 17, 2004. We have come to Austin today from Ardmore, Oklahoma to stand outside the Texas Governor’s Mansion and attempt to deliver this letter to you in person, because we want to make sure that you know about Todd’s innocence and to urge you to stop executions in Texas and determine why innocent people are being executed in Texas.”
“Please ensure that no other family suffers the tragedy of seeing one of their loved ones wrongfully executed. Please enact a moratorium on executions and create a special blue ribbon commission to study the administration of the death penalty in Texas. A moratorium will ensure that no other innocent people are executed while the system is being studied and reforms implemented.”
I don’t have a problem with the death penalty, in theory. In too many cases there is little or no physical or direct or other hard evidence.
In a case where reliable witness saw someone commit a heinous crime, and there is genuine physical evidence, and the only counter argument is “But it wasn’t that bad”, sure — add the person to the waiting list at Huntsville.
In this case, where is the container that held the supposed accelerant? Were their fingerprints on the container that isn’t mentioned? Did witnesses see the accused purchase the accelerant in the non-existent container? What’s the physical evidence that doesn’t involve conjecture?
I think you should revise the title of your post to Texas Executed AnOTHER Innocent Man.
If Amp uses that title without knowing whether any previous executed persons were actually innocent, he’d be speculating. Most people in prison committed the crime, and there are more protections for people who are subject to the death penalty than there are for others (although unfortunately the Tuff On Crime crowd keeps trying to cut those protections in the name of “speedy justice”). You can’t assume simply by numbers that if a state executed X number of people, some of them MUST have been innocent. You have to look at the process and evidence in each case.
Proponents of the death penalty point to a case like John Wayne Gacy. For those of you not familiar with the case, Gacy was a middle-aged Chicago suburbanite who was a clown who acted at children’s birthday parties. I don’t remember offhand how many kids’ bodies they dug up out of his yard and from underneath his house, but IIRC it was > 20. This is where it’s tempting to say “O.K., this is a clear case and this is the justification for the death penalty.” If there was a way to define a clear bright line that would differentiate “no doubt” from “some doubt” I might be able to be persuaded. But I still have some hesitation.
If Amp uses that title without knowing whether any previous executed persons were actually innocent, he’d be speculating.
But Amp already is speculating. The first sentences of the article acknowledges that it can’t be proven that Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent.
Yes, my somewhat snarky comment was a reaction/opinion, not an actual request or suggestion for Amp to change the title of his post. I didn’t intend to make an argument of ‘Texas has executed 424 people – some of them must be innocent’ based solely on numbers. I would assume that readers of this blog and in the context of this article understand that Texas executes a lot of people and has a history of questionable death row cases and that execution in the US and the World is under constant debate. As far as innocence and speculation goes, I’d wager that it is much more than 50% likely that Texas has executed multiple innocent people (innocent of the crime for which they were executed) than not. Unfortunately the same system that allows for the executions is the one that ultimately defines ‘guilty’ vs. ‘innocent’. I don’t know how to turn my speculation into proof since the institution doing the killing is the one that defines guilt and proof.
In IL we had numerous cases where DNA ‘proved’ individuals innocent, but this ‘proof’ isn’t absolute — it’s an acknowledgement that the system is not perfect, a view that DNA is a valid source for identifying individuals, and an acceptance that in specific cases errors were made. In what I’ve read Texas doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to admit mistakes so their definition of ‘guilty’ is irrelevant to me. Texas kills people unjustly.
Jon @ 8:
Right, but there is a difference between killing a person who did not commit the crime, of which they stood accused and were convicted, and killing a person for reasons having something to do with other than the crime of which they were properly tried and convicted.
Executing convicted murders who actually committed capital murder is only “wrong” if applied unfairly. From everything I know, Texas applies the death penalty unfairly (I live here, I can make unsupported statements like that all I want!). Has Texas executed someone who was factually innocent? G-d forbid such a thing would happen. Has Texas executed someone who might not have been executed if they were richer, whiter, more intelligent? Probably. And from what I know, almost certainly more than once.
Has Texas executed someone who was factually innocent? G-d forbid such a thing would happen.
I think the post is meant to point out that such a thing did happen.
Not in Texas. From how it picks its appellate judges, to statutory limits on DNA admittance, to severe underfunding of indigent legal sources, not to mention racially based jury selection instruction manuals for prosecutors, Texas goes out of its way to just execute people, period. Mostly indigent Black men including those who are mentally disabled. It’s a natural extension from lynching. In fact, it’s been called “legalized lynching”.
And it’s a given that the state’s probably executed innocent people before.
I live in my own state’s “death belt” region so there’s plenty of opportunity to view death penalty trials. Some of them are so political and with so much grandstanding, I think the justice system forgets that this is about executing people. California rarely executes people as the process involves extensive appeals beginning with an automatic one. I was interviewed extensively in 2008 by an appellate attorney assigned by the state to one local death penalty case and it’s still at the automatic appeal level and the trial took place in 2002/03. And he said he’d get back in touch in several years when he started doing the meatier appeals in a case with multiple appellate issues.
Plus, there’s still the issue of lethal injection and the Eighth Amendment and the state’s AMA’s stance against “doing harm” by monitoring executions. Lots of issues as support for the death penalty declined (by about 10% ) in a recent poll.
But then my county has a DA who used to be in the state legislation and was once quoted as saying at a meeting that it took a good prosecutor to convict a guilty man and a great one to convict an innocent man. And he wants to be the next state AG.
And another thing that’s interesting about Texas is that the politicians including George W. Bush when he’s governor said that they were responsible for making sure the system worked when innocent people did wind up on Death Row by releasing them when it came to light.
BS, mostly. In most cases, it’s journalists, law advocacy groups, even high school/college students who have taken it upon themselves to investigate these cases. Organizations like the Innocence Project which was instrumental in the Willingham case.
I did find this interesting article about compensation packages for wrongly imprisoned people in Texas, which leads the nation in releasing incarcerated inmates who are innocent.
Radfem,
Many of those are coming out of Dallas County. My thoughts are the Feds need to get a Civil Rights investigator to go to Dallas and find out who can be charged with Federal Civil Rights violations.
Then let them spend a few years in Huntsville. In the general population.
Did anyone in Dallas County ever contact the Feds?
Initiating investigations isn’t all that difficult IME. Keeping them investigating is much more difficult whether it’s the FBI doing its role in civil rights violation investigating or the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (criminal and/or special litigation).
Radfem,
I’m pretty sure the Feds have taken a look at Dallas, and I’ve heard on the news that “They” (whoever “They” is) are taking a look at evidence handling and withheld evidence. I know there is attention being paid at the State level because the compensation fund is sending a lot of money to Dallas.