"Charged with the horrific crime of intentionally torching his home and leaving his three daughters to the blaze, Willingham’s 1991 conviction and 2004 execution were secured by two great bugbears of America’s criminal justice system: pseudo-scientific forensics and the compromised testimony of a jailhouse snitch," the column continues.
The fire investigators who fingered Willingham relied on the kind of sorcery that fire scientists have tried for the past 20 years to chase from the field."
TA-NEHISI COATES; Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a senior editor at The Atlantic;
MARK CALENDER NOW: IMPORTANT JOINT NPR, FRONTLINE, PROPUBLICA INVESTIGATION OF CHILD DEATH CASES INVOLVING ABUSE, ASSAULT AND "SHAKEN-BABY SYNDROME." ASKS IF DEATH INVESTIGATORS ARE BEING PROPERLY TRAINED FOR CHILD CASES; FIRST OF THREE SEGMENTS ON "THE CHILD CASES" AIRS ON JUNE 28 AT 9.00 PM:
When a child dies under suspicious circumstances, abuse is often suspected. That's what happened in the case of six-month-old Isis Vas, whose death was deemed "a clear-cut and classic" case of child abuse, sending a man named Ernie Lopez to prison for 60 years. But now a Texas judge has moved to overturn Lopez's conviction, and new questions are being asked about the quality of expert testimony in this and many other similar cases. In this joint investigation with ProPublica and NPR, FRONTLINE correspondent A.C. Thompson unearths more than 20 child death cases in which people were jailed on medical evidence -- involving abuse, assault and "shaken-baby syndrome" -- that was later found unreliable or flat-out wrong. Are death investigators being properly trained for child cases? The Child Cases is the first of three magazine segments airing June 28 at 9 p.m. (check local listings);
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-child-cases/
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BACKGROUND: (Wikipedia); Cameron Todd Willingham (January 9, 1968 – February 17, 2004), born in Carter County, Oklahoma, was sentenced to death by the state of Texas for murdering his three daughters—two year old Amber Louise Kuykendall, and one year old twins Karmon Diane Willingham and Kameron Marie Willingham— by setting his house on fire. The fire occurred on December 23, 1991 in Corsicana, Texas. Lighter fluid was kept on the front porch of Willingham’s house as evidenced by a melted container found there. Some of this fluid may have entered the front doorway of the house carried along by fire hose water. It was alleged this fluid was deliberately poured to start the fire and that Willingham chose this entrance way so as to impede rescue attempts. The prosecution also used other arson theories that have since been brought into question. In addition to the arson evidence, a jailhouse informant claimed Willingham confessed that he set the fire to hide his wife's physical abuse of the girls, although the girls showed no other injuries besides those caused by the fire. Neighbors also testified that Willingham did not try hard enough to save his children. They allege he "crouched down" in his front yard and watched the house burn for a period of time without attempting to enter the home or go to neighbors for help or request they call firefighters. He claimed that he tried to go back into the house but it was "too hot". As firefighters arrived, however, he rushed towards the garage and pushed his car away from the burning building, requesting firefighters do the same rather than put out the fire. After the fire, Willingham showed no emotion at the death of his children and spent the next day sorting through the debris, laughing and playing music. He expressed anger after finding his dartboard burned in the fire. Firefighters and other witnesses were suspicious of how he reacted during and after the fire. Willingham was charged with murder on January 8, 1992. During his trial in August 1992, he was offered a life term in exchange for a guilty plea, which he turned down insisting he was innocent. After his conviction, he and his wife divorced. She later stated that she believed that Willingham was guilty. Prosecutors alleged this was part of a pattern of behavior intended to rid himself of his children. Willingham had a history of committing crimes, including burglary, grand larceny and car theft. There was also an incident when he beat his pregnant wife over the stomach with a telephone to induce a miscarriage. When asked if he had a final statement, Willingham said: "Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby." However, his final words were directed at his ex-wife, Stacy Willingham. He turned to her and said "I hope you rot in hell, bitch" several times while attempting to extend his middle finger in an obscene gesture. His ex-wife did not show any reaction to this. He was executed by lethal injection on February 17, 2004. Subsequent to that date, persistent questions have been raised as to the accuracy of the forensic evidence used in the conviction, specifically, whether it can be proven that an accelerant (such as the lighter fluid mentioned above) was used to start the fatal fire. Fire investigator Gerald L. Hurst reviewed the case documents including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene. Hurst said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire. Legendary "Innocence" lawyer Barry Scheck asked participants at a conference of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers held in Toronto in August, 2010, how Willingham, who had lost his family to the fire, must have felt to hear the horrific allegations made against him on the basis of the bogus evidence, "and nobody pays any attention to it as he gets executed." "It's the Dreyfus Affair, and you all know what that is," Scheck continued. "It's the Dreyfus AffaIr of the United States. Luke Power's music video "Texas Death Row Blues," can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2010/09/cameron-todd-willingham-texas-death-row_02.html
For an important critique of the devastating state of arson investigation in America with particular reference to the Willingham and Willis cases, go to:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/01/fire-investigation-great-read-veteran.html
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"Should Gov. Rick Perry of Texas enter the 2012 presidential race, he would enjoy a strange and remarkable escort — the irrepressible ghost of Cameron Todd Willingham," the column by Ta-Nehisi Coates published in the New York Times on June 22, 2011 under the heading, "The Haunting of Rick Perry" begins.
"Charged with the horrific crime of intentionally torching his home and leaving his three daughters to the blaze, Willingham’s 1991 conviction and 2004 execution were secured by two great bugbears of America’s criminal justice system: pseudoscientific forensics and the compromised testimony of a jailhouse snitch," the column continues.
"The fire investigators who fingered Willingham relied on the kind of sorcery that fire scientists have tried for the past 20 years to chase from the field. The informant, for his part, claimed that Willingham had inexplicably blurted out a confession, then recanted his tale. Then, in the words of New Yorker reporter David Grann, he “recanted his recantation.” When Grann tracked him down in 2009, he told him that “It’s very possible I misunderstood” what Willingham said, pausing to add “the statute of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn’t it?”
Perry was unswayed by pleas from Willingham’s lawyers and rejected their request for a 30-day reprieve. This registers as a rather mild atrocity in Texas, a state that does not so much tinker with the machinery of death as it gleefully fumbles at the controls.
In 2000, an investigation by The Chicago Tribune found that almost one-third of court-appointed defense lawyers in capital cases in Texas had, at some point, been publicly sanctioned by the state’s trial board. The Tribune uncovered cases of lawyers falling asleep at trials, engaging in extortion and assaulting teenage girls. Prosecutors and police were found concealing evidence or worse. In 1980, Cesar Fierro received the death penalty on the strength of a confession secured after an El Paso sheriff colluded with police across the border in Juárez, Mexico, who arrested Fierro’s parents and threatened to attach an electric generator to his stepfather’s genitals. Fierro is still on death row.
Texas regularly executes more criminals than any other state, and does so in such haphazard fashion that it could be comic. Except people are dying.
In 2005, Texas created a state commission to investigate the use of forensic science in criminal trials. The Willingham case was one of first on the docket.
But, in 2009, Perry, anticipating a primary fight, subverted the commission by replacing its chair in the midst of the Willingham investigation. The new panel chair promptly canceled the hearing and declined to hold more for the rest of the year. The Willingham case did not appear in the commission minutes until April, a month after Perry had won the Republican primary.
The employment of lethal force is perhaps the greatest power afforded a state by its citizens. Thus the death penalty debate is ill-suited for those who would shrink from the implications of either its deployment or abrogation.
I am opposed to the death penalty. But my opposition is tempered by the belief that Americans support capital punishment for real and substantial reasons. The unfortunate fact of humanity is that it tends to regularly birth butchers who think nothing of concealing their work beneath a seductive mask of victimhood.
Thirty years ago, Roger Keith Coleman raped and stabbed to death his sister-in-law Wanda McCoy in the mining town of Grundy, Va. Sentenced to die, Coleman spent the rest of his life seducing activists and enrolling them to the cause of his innocence. On the eve of his death, Coleman was awarded a platform by the likes of “Good Morning America,” “Today,” “Larry King Live” and Time magazine. Meanwhile, McCoy’s family, and the small town of Grundy, endured the scornful eye of the nation and the implicit inference that hicks from Appalachia were set upon enacting frontier justice. So convinced were Coleman’s advocates, that after his execution in 1992, they pressed for a postmortem DNA tests. Those tests confirmed Coleman’s guilt.
Whenever tempted by moral dudgeon, it should be remembered that abolishing the death penalty would mean asking decent people to tolerate the lives of criminals who revel in the abuse of that tolerance. Opposing the death penalty is not rooted simply in the pursuit of justice, but, perhaps more firmly, in understanding the world’s fundamental injustice, and the ease with which an attempt to permanently balance the scales ultimately imbalances them further. For want of this lesson, Texas may well have executed an innocent man.
Whatever one thinks of the death penalty, the accounts of those who would seek to conceal the results of their theory should be closely checked. If only for that reason, the prospect of Governor Perry as commander in chief induces a chilling nostalgia. Indeed, choosing a leader of the free world from the ranks of those who sport a self-serving incuriosity is a habit, like crash landings and cock-fights, best cultivated in strict moderation.
Once a century should suffice."
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The column can be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/opinion/23coates.html?_r=1
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
