New England Law's Tigran Eldred shares his thoughts below on the Willingham case:
In the long debate over whether the US has executed anyone who was innocent, one of the cases most frequently mentioned is of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in Texas in 2004 for setting fire in his home that killed his three young children. Most of the attention in the case has focused on the extensive forensic analysis addressing whether the prosecution relied on “junk science” to establish that the fire was arson rather than an accident. Some LEF readers may have read David Grann’s excellent 2009 article in the New Yorker, Trial By Fire, which describes in detail the problems with the forensic evidence used to convict Willingham (the case also received extensive media coverage during the last presidential cycle when Gov. Rick Perry was criticized for allegedly interfering with the commission that was investigating the matter; see here and here).
Now there is a separate and more recent basis for the claim of Willingham’s innocence: mounting allegations that the prosecutor in the case, John Jackson, for more than two decades has suppressed evidence of a secret deal made with a key witness in the case -- the jailhouse snitch who testified at trial that he overheard Willingham confess to the murders. The witness has recently provided an extensive interview that describes how he fabricated his testimony in exchange for substantial leniency he was promised by Jackson’s office.
The details of the alleged cooperation agreement, and how it further reveals why Willingham may have been innocent, are set out in this 69-page bar grievance filed by the Innocence Project and others (including lawyers from powerhouse law firm, Susman Godfrey) [news account here; Jackson’s response to the press here]. The grievance alleges that Jackson (who, after Willingham’s conviction, became a judge and has since retired) violated a host of disciplinary rules and Texas criminal laws, including tampering with evidence and perjury. Coming on the heels of the Ken Anderson case (the former Texas prosecutor who was disbarred and sentenced to jail for suppressing evidence), it will be interesting to see what comes of this grievance, one of the most extensive I’ve seen.
For more on the Willingham case, see the Innocence Project’s webpage.