Word: arsons
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...murder of his three children in a 1991 house fire in Corsicana, Texas. In September, Willingham's story was detailed in a New Yorker investigative report by David Grann. It details the conclusions of two noted experts that the fire was accidental and that the arson evidence presented at Willingham's trial was not based on science. "The New Yorker's investigation lays out this case in its totality and leads to the inescapable conclusion that Willingham was innocent," Scheck says. (Read about the decline in death sentences in Texas...
Much of the case for Willingham's innocence rests on the conclusions of two prominent forensic arson experts including Craig Beyler, who was scheduled to testify before the commission last week. But Perry's new forensics chairman, Williamson County district attorney John Bradley, a well-known, tough-on-crime prosecutor, cancelled last week's meeting on Willingham, saying he needed time to get up to speed on the commission's work. Beyler's testimony in the Willingham case has now been put off until Bradley sets a hearing, and he has not indicated when, or if, he will, saying...
...Perry stands by the decision to execute Willingham. "I am familiar with the latter-day supposed experts on the arson side of it," Perry told the Dallas Morning News last month. Over the weekend, his office told the Corsicana Daily Sun: "Governor Perry has reviewed the totality of the facts of the case, and has stood by the conclusions reached by the courts ... To suggest the arson testimony was the only evidence presented to the jury is grossly inaccurate. The jury also heard testimony of inaccuracies in Willingham's statements...
...Arson...
...residents with a posture that could have been summed up in the phrase Now it's our turn. But by his third term, Young was governing more by rhetoric than by action. These were the years of a local phenomenon known as Devil's Night, a nihilistic orgy of arson that in one especially explosive year saw 800 houses burn to the ground in 72 hours. Violent crime soared under Young. The school system began to cave in on itself. When jobs disappeared with the small businesses boarding up their doors and abandoning the city, the mayor seemed to find...