Why has Texas’s governor derailed a death-penalty investigation?
THE sad case of Cameron Todd Willingham began two days before Christmas in 1991. He was alone with his three daughters—one toddler and two baby twins—when their house in Corsicana, a small town south of Dallas, began to burn. Mr Willingham later said the house was so thick with smoke he could not find any of the girls before escaping. But at his trial, investigators testified that based on the burn patterns in the house, the fire had been arson. Mr Willingham was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Years of court challenges came to nothing and in 2004 Mr Willingham was executed. “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man—convicted of a crime I did not commit,” he said from the gurney. Innocence is a recurrent claim in last statements. In Mr Willingham’s case, it may well have been true. Shortly before he was executed, an arson expert from Austin faxed a report to the governor, Rick Perry, arguing that the 1991 investigation was based on bad science and that t
