Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?

I’ve written about the death penalty a few times (I’m against it in all circumstances), and one of the ways I always sum up my arguments is this: what if someone who is innocent gets executed?

That may well have happened in – surprise – Texas, where back in 2004 a man was killed by the state for the crime of murdering his three children through arson. It’s possible, however, that his actual crime was liking the wrong kind of music.

At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60—a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house—and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting—it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture—a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel. . . . I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.”

Now the man in question, one Cameron Todd Willingham, was, no doubt, a man with issues. He’d been convicted of a number of petty offenses over the years and had been known to hit his wife. He wasn’t a saint, to be sure, but there wasn’t any apparent motive for him to kill his kids and no real signs that he’d exhibited sociopathic behavior. That didn’t stop court experts who said he did, however.

The other medical expert was James P. Grigson, a forensic psychiatrist. He testified so often for the prosecution in capital-punishment cases that he had become known as Dr. Death. (A Texas appellate judge once wrote that when Grigson appeared on the stand the defendant might as well “commence writing out his last will and testament.”) Grigson suggested that Willingham was an “extremely severe sociopath,” and that “no pill” or treatment could help him. Grigson had previously used nearly the same words in helping to secure a death sentence against Randall Dale Adams, who had been convicted of murdering a police officer, in 1977. After Adams, who had no prior criminal record, spent a dozen years on death row—and once came within seventy-two hours of being executed—new evidence emerged that absolved him, and he was released. In 1995, three years after Willingham’s trial, Grigson was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for violating ethics. The association stated that Grigson had repeatedly arrived at a “psychiatric diagnosis without first having examined the individuals in question, and for indicating, while testifying in court as an expert witness, that he could predict with 100-per-cent certainty that the individuals would engage in future violent acts.”

Charming.

The article about this goes on at some length and it’s fairly clear that there’s at least reasonable doubt as to Willingham’s guilt. So, congrats, Texas. You may well be the first state to execute an innocent person since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the 1970’s. Well done! Though to be fair, you probably aren’t the actual first. Just the first we’re finding out about.

Believe it or not the article actually goes downhill form the parts I’d quoted. This guy got the royal screw-job and is now dead as a result; the scientific evidence makes that quite clear. I strongly suggest everyone check out the article. It’s a little long, but very worth it. My summations and quotes don’t begin to do it justice.

And to those of you who favor capital punishment, assume this man was innocent and ask yourself, “What do we do now that we’ve apparently killed an innocent man?”