Evidence of Concealed Jailhouse Deal Raises Questions About a Texas Execution

[PumpkinAle]

In the 10 years since Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham after convicting him on charges of setting his house on fire and murdering his three young daughters, family members and death penalty opponents have argued that he was innocent. Now newly discovered evidence suggests that the prosecutor in the case may have concealed a deal with a jailhouse informant whose testimony was a key part of the execution decision.

The battle to clear Mr. Willingham’s name has symbolic value because it may offer evidence that an innocent man was executed, something opponents of the death penalty believe happens more than occasionally. By contrast, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote seven years ago that he was unaware of “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”

Continued at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/us/evidence-of-concealed-jailhouse-deal-raises-questions-about-a-texas-execution.html

[John1956PA]

1. A few more comments appear at the following thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024580411

There is a need for the prosecutor's note, written on the inside of a file folder, to be to be explained. The note suggests that the jailhouse informant would receive a lesser charge in an unrelated robbery case if he would testify against Cameron Todd Willingham.

[Ilsa]

2. send the prosecutor to death row.

Make an example of him to all other cheating prosecutors.

[Nye Bevan]

3. Fuck. Someone was *executed* based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant?

I cannot even express my disgust over this. Just abolish the death penalty and be done with it, as almost all the rest of the enightened world has done.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. 12 years from his conviction until his execution.

Yet there are people here clamoring that 12 years is too long to wait for vengeance and that they need to limit the right of appeals for death penalty cases so that the execution can take place as soon as possible and there can be "closure".

12 years didn't save this man's life.

[Wilms]

5. ^