In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire.
“Trial by Fire,” a New Yorker article by David Grann, lays out in painstaking detail how the state of Texas almost certainly executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was convicted in 1992 of setting a fire in his home that killed his three children, but modern analysis showed that the arson investigators violated “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.”
As the article highlights, the lack of standards and care displayed by the Texas criminal justice system is disgusting. Their heedless enthusiasm for the death penalty is backwards and reprehensible.
This seems a good time to link to the Innocence Project’s article highlighting the Causes of Wrongful Conviction.