Beyond The Broken Spectrum

For those of us keeping a casual eye on the death penalty it seems that every few months you hear about a capital case where troubling questions have been raised, usually because new advances in forensic technology are allowing testing that wasn’t possible at the time of the crime… At this rate it’s not hard to imagine that some day the United States could execute an innocent person.

What is hard to imagine is that a state might actually admit that it had executed an innocent person. But up until recently, Texas was getting awfully close.

Thanks to David Grann’s piece in the New Yorker last month, the case of Cameron Todd Willingham is getting the exposure it deserves. Willingham was executed by the state of Texas for setting fire to his home in 1991. The blaze killed his three young children. His conviction was largely a result of the testimony of two local arson investigators, who said Mr Willingham had deliberately set the fire. But subsequent reviews found troubling problems with the arson finding. In 2004, as Willingham sat on death row protesting his innocence, an independent investigator reviewed the original report and concluded that the fire was accidental and that the initial investigation was based on “junk science”. That report was sent to the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles, but Willingham’s appeals were turned down and he was executed on February 17th 2004.

Story continues at Economist.com

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