Execution of an Innocent Man

No, this post isn't about Troy Davis, the Georgia death row inmate I've written about many times before. This is about Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who tried desperately to save his children in an accidental house fire back in 1991. On the night of the incident, firefighters had to physically restrain the 23-year-old Willingham with handcuffs to keep from going into the house to save his kids, as Bob Herbert writes in today's NY Times. Later, a state fire marshal concocted a theory that Willingham had started the fire that killed his young children. The local district attorney believed the fire marshal, some neighbors said that Willingham had acted "strange," a mentally unstable and drug-addicted jailhouse snitch testified against Willingham, and voila! Texas put an innocent man to death. Scientific research, commissioned by the state of Texas, has demonstrated unquestionably that the fire marshal had no basis on which to rule the fire an arson.

Craig Grann's phenomenal, thoroughly researched article in the current New Yorker tells the painful story of Willingham, who maintained his innocence until his final days.

For decades, opponents of the death penalty have pondered when this day would come — when a state would admit that it had sanctioned the killing of an innocent person. Today's the day.

I'll repeat the obvious question: Why on Earth do we have a death penalty?

UPDATE: Barry Scheck, co-director of The Innocence Project, has an excellent op-ed discussing Willingham's case and the array of problems with forensic science. Just this term in the Supreme Court, none other than Justice Antonin Scalia—someone not typically a fan of criminal defendants—described how unreliable these "sciences" can be.