Barry Scheck on the Execution of Cameron Todd Willingham

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, wrote this for the Huffington Post.

Willingham was convicted of murdering his two young children by arson. He spent 12 years on death row in Texas before he was executed. Forensic science that supposedly proved the fire was intentionally set was central to Willingham's conviction was, in fact, completely invalid -- which the experts who testified should have known in 1992. A state forensic science commission in Texas is officially looking into the case and selected a widely respected expert to analyze whether the forensic testimony was valid. Last week the expert filed a report confirming what five other leading arson experts have found -- what passed for arson analysis in the Willingham case had no scientific basis, and the scientific facts in Willingham's case were the same as the case of Ernest Willis. In an entirely separate case, Willis was sent to death row in Texas for an arson murder of family members but, luckily, in his the state recognized the arson analysis was wrong. Willis was fully exonerated just months after Willingham was executed.

The state forensic commission in Texas is still finishing its work on Willingham's case, but David Grann's New Yorker article examines the entire case, including the jailhouse informant who plainly gave false testimony and the circumstantial evidence, flimsy in the first place, that was not what it appeared to be to the jury. After reading Grann's report, fair-minded people will know beyond a reasonable doubt that an innocent person was executed

So what now? Whether our criminal justice system has executed an innocent man should no longer be an open question. We don't know how often it happens, but we know it has happened. Cameron Todd Willingham's case proves that.

The focus turns to how we can stop it from happening again. As long as our system of justice makes mistakes -- including the ultimate mistake -- we cannot continue executing people.

Read the full article: Barry Scheck: Innocent, but Executed

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