CAMERON TODD Willingham was executed by the state of Texas for a crime that he didn't commit.
That is the conclusion of a lengthy investigation published this month in the New Yorker. In devastating detail, reporter David Grann lays out the facts of a case that contains all the familiar hallmarks of wrongful convictions--junk science, inept defense lawyers, a jailhouse snitch, and a court system designed to make it next-to-impossible for the innocent to clear their names.
Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. He was convicted of setting a December 23, 1991, fire that killed his three young daughters--2 year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins, Karmon and Kameron--while his wife Stacy went to the Salvation Army to buy the children Christmas presents.
Witnesses at the scene described Willingham as frantic to save the children. Neighbors who saw the smoke ran to the house and found Willingham on the porch wearing only blue jeans, his chest blackened with soot, and his hair and eyelids singed from the fire. He had been trying to reach Amber, whose cries had awakened him. Once outside, he broke through the windows of the children's bedroom with a stick as neighbors called the fire department--but the flames were too intense.
He would later have to be restrained--eventually handcuffed--after repeatedly trying to run back into the house. "My babies are burning up!" neighbors heard him scream again and again. "My babies."
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