within the past couple of weeks i (coincidentially) read

the story about cameron willingham, his life, the crime they alleged he committed and his death. it was eye opening. texas very well could have executed an innocent man (how many others one wonders?)

one would think the governor would WANT to find out if an innocent man was put to death or not. i guess the governor of texas doesn't want to find out at all.

then again doesn't texas kill more people than any other state?

where are the watchdog agencies now? where are they when people's rights and our court system are at stake?

it's an ap article so i can't print any of it.

what it says though is gov perry of texas dismissed three people from the tx forensic commission who were investigating the arson (and subsequent conviction and execution of) cameron todd willingham.

it appears a REAL arson investigator was hired AFTER the initial conviction (based on what appears to be SHITE forensic evidence of a couple of good ol' boy tx sheriff types who really were NOT trained in arson investigation) named craig beyler. he found many many many holes in the story. i believe he came out and said he didn't think willingham did it.


Texas governor stops review of possible wrongful execution
AP

and here's the article i read a couple of weeks ago from the new yorker. it's long but man, how can we be capable of executing an innocent man? what is a ZILLION times worse is; us letting the governor of texas BURY IT (so to speak)

Trial by Fire

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

by

The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.

Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside.

Willingham told the Barbees to call the Fire Department, and while Diane raced down the street to get help he found a stick and broke the children’s bedroom window. Fire lashed through the hole. He broke another window; flames burst through it, too, and he retreated into the yard, kneeling in front of the house. A neighbor later told police that Willingham intermittently cried, “My babies!” then fell silent, as if he had “blocked the fire out of his mind.”

Diane Barbee, returning to the scene, could feel intense heat radiating off the house. Moments later, the five windows of the children’s room exploded and flames “blew out,” as Barbee put it. Within minutes, the first firemen had arrived, and Willingham approached them, shouting that his children were in their bedroom, where the flames were thickest. A fireman sent word over his radio for rescue teams to “step on it.”..........