Fresh doubts over a Texas execution

Fresh doubts over a Texas execution

New evidence revives concerns that a man was wrongly put to death in 2004

by Maurice Possley, The Marshall Project
Published on August 3, 2014

CORSICANA, Tex. — For more than 20 years, the prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham of murdering his three young daughters has insisted that the authorities made no deals to secure the testimony of the jailhouse informer who told jurors that Willingham confessed the crime to him. ... Since Willingham was executed in 2004, officials have continued to defend the account of the informer, Johnny E. Webb, even as a series of scientific experts have discredited the forensic evidence that Willingham might have deliberately set the house fire in which his toddlers were killed.

But now new evidence has revived questions about Willingham’s guilt: In taped interviews, Webb, who has previously both recanted and affirmed his testimony, gives his first detailed account of how he lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webb’s prison sentence for robbery and to arrange thousands of dollars in support from a wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered letters and court files show that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony and to coordinate with the rancher, Charles S. Pearce Jr., to keep the mercurial informer in line.
....

Opponents of the death penalty have long focused on questionable evidence used against Willingham, believing that his case could be the first to show conclusively that an innocent man was put to death in the modern era of capital punishment. As the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty in Kansas in 2006, Justice Antonin Scalia declared that the opposition could not cite “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”

In a grievance filed July 25 with the State Bar of Texas, the Innocence Project, a New York-based advocacy group that has investigated the Willingham case for a decade, argued that Jackson’s conduct “violated his professional, ethical and constitutional obligations.” The group called for a full investigation of Jackson’s handling of the case and argued that he could be sanctioned or even criminally prosecuted for falsifying official records, withholding evidence from the defense, suborning perjury and obstructing justice.

The Innocence Project

The three Duke lacrosse players wrongly accused of rape in 2006 settled a civil suit against the city of Durham, North Carolina a few months back. They gave instructions that the city send money to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission instead:

City, Duke lacrosse players settle

May. 16, 2014 @ 11:02 AM
Ray Gronberg

The Herald-Sun

DURHAM —City officials announced Friday they’d settled one of the two remaining lawsuits spawned by the Duke lacrosse case.

Filings in federal court confirmed that the city had settled with 2005-06 Duke men’s lacrosse players David Evans, Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann. All three had been indicted on rape charges in 2006 but were exonerated a year later.

A statement issued by the city said officials had agreed to make a one-time grant of $50,000 to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state panel set up to review post-conviction claims that claims that a person accused of a crime is actually innocent.

The city’s statement also said it “fully concurs” with state Attorney General Roy Cooper’s decision in 2007 to drop the charges on the grounds that Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann “were innocent.”