ON THE 17 February 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was brought to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
There, he was strapped to a chair and executed by lethal injection. He had been found guilty of starting the fire that killed his three daughters: two-year-old Amber Louise Kuykendall and one-year-old twins Karmon Diane Willingham and Kameron Marie Willingham.
Willingham was called “a monster” by Texas state governor Rick Perry and was convicted on the back of two crucial pieces of evidence: an expert witness declared that the fire was arson and the testimony of a convict that Willingham had confessed to him that he had started the fire. Other evidence relied on the presence of Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin posters in the house and testimony from a psychologist who was later struck off.
The only problem with the two key pieces of evidence? They were both wrong.
In 2004, just four days before Willingham was put to death, arson expert Gerald Hurst said that “…most of the conclusions reached by the Fire Marshall would be considered invalid in light of current knowledge“.
That finding was backed up by the state Forensic Science Commission (FSC), an arm of the state of Texas. The FSC found that the original finding had relied on “folklore” and “myths”.
That the case was built largely on the finding of original fire investigator Manuel Vasquez that arson was the cause of the fire held no sway with Governor Perry, who refused a stay on the execution.
The rest of the prosecution hinged on the testimony of a jailhouse informant by the name of Johnny Webb.
Webb was in jail for armed robbery at the time and has said he was traumatised from a sexual assault suffered in an earlier jail sentence.
At the trial, he told the jury how Willingham had told him he had set the fire.
Since then, Webb has recanted his testimony and earlier this week The Marshall Project, a publication that aims to shine a light on the American justice system, published a story that suggests authorities knew Webb was not telling the truth.
The piece, which was carried in The Washington Post, detailed how then state prosecutor John H Jackson had coerced Webb into testifying, promising him the help of a local businessman, who backed Webb with tens of thousands of dollars.
Jackson would become a judge and deny that he had done anything untoward with Webb’s testimony, even when Webb asked to recant what he told the jury.
Despite letters proving otherwise, Jackson told the trial that no deal had been made with Webb to secure his testimony.
In 2009, Webb told The New Yorker:
[I]t’s very possible I misunderstood what he said. Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy. My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.
He has also given interviews to The Innocence Project, an American non-profit that fights for those who may have been wrongfully convicted. He told them:
“I’ve been wanting to come forward with this … for a long, long time about certain specific things that no one’s ever known. This has been something that’s pretty much destroyed my life for 22 years.”
Willingham’s family have fought for a posthumous exoneration, but the State of Texas Parole Board denied their most recent application in April, telling them to reapply in two years.
Paul Cates of The Innocence Project says that while proponents of the death penalty claim no innocent man has been executed, Willingham may be the most clear-cut case.
“We got involved with the Willingham case at first because of the faulty forensic science. As we dug deeper, we uncovered gross prosecutorial misconduct.
“In the end, Johnny Webb’s testimony was what the state used to execute Willingham. We’ve done a lot of work and found out that the prosecutor had an undisclosed deal.
There is pretty clear evidence that John Jackson used a legal procedure to reduce Johnny Webb’s sentence. There is letter after letter to the corrections department, to the governor…volumes of evidence that there was a deal between the two.
“The prosecutor who handled the case in 2004 now says had he known about the deal, he would have been bound to disclose it.
“There was only two pieces of evidence: Webb and the fire investigators.
“There was no other evidence.
While we may have no definitive evidence, there was a lot to suggest that there is any legitimate evidence to execute a man.
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