David Grann, in The New Yorker, wrote an amazing (like one of the best I've read in the last couple years) piece about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham who was convicted and executed for causing the fire that killed his three young children. The case was based on questionable witness accounts and especially on arson investigation techniques that science has recently, and seemingly unequivocally, debunked.
As compelling as the case is, the soul of the piece is the portrait of Willingham himself. Despite his failure to finish high school and his incarceration, he seemed to have died an incredibly soulful and thoughtful person. The article quotes from his correspondances with his parents and his only outside-world friend, Elizabeth Gilbert:
" On February 17th, the day he was set to die, Willingham’s parents and several relatives gathered in the prison visiting room. Plexiglas still separated Willingham from them. “I wish I could touch and hold both of you,” Willingham had written to them earlier. “I always hugged Mom but I never hugged Pop much.”
Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate.com, however, explains that even though many believe that the discovery of a case where an executed man was proven sufficiently innocent might not be enough to win the legal battle against capital punishment in the crazy, backwards U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:
"[t]his court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."
Wait, so a man innocent can be executed legally? That's fucked!
Read The New Yorker piece here. Read the slate.com piece here.
