Texas' war on science has a victim

Cameron Todd Willingham is dead and I doubt anybody misses him much. He was, by all accounts, a genuine piece of shit who beat his wife, ran around, used drugs and got tatted up. If Willingham had been shot in the street, it’s likely his assailant would have gotten off on the old Texas defense of “he needed shootin’.”

But Todd Willingham wasn’t killed by somebody in street. The State of Texas killed him, despite having no significant evidence he was guilty. In fact there is no significant evidence that a crime even occurred.

The short version is this. Willingham’s three children died Dec. 23, 1991 in a house fire at the Corsicana home he shared with them and his wife. A jury convicted him of killing them by arson based on testimony from the fire inspector — who had little formal training — that there was evidence of accelerants present and a burn trail that followed the path Willingham took out the door.

Prior to his execution numerous arson specialists, men with PhD’s who had actually done experiments, came forward and said there was no evidence of accelerants, no evidence, even, of arson. But the appeals court and our fine governors have all ignored the science and Willingham lies buried far from his children, his last wish — to have been buried next to them — denied by an ex-wife who first defended him, then claimed he confessed.

For the best account of the case, read David Grann’s piece in the New Yorker. I’m not here to debate guilt or innocence of Willingham. There is a darker force at work than just a bad verdict. Even after the New Yorker police brought the science to national attention, folks worked diligently to suppress it. Our fine governor applied a little extra mousse to his coif and pronounced Willingham a monster, as if he’d ever met the man. Then Governor Fonzerelli fired the head of the commission appointed to investigate forensic science in order to push back hearings till after the election, as though the news that Bush killed an innocent man would impact Fonzie’s re-election chances. Or surprise anyone. The commission did meet, the man sent to defend the science was a lawyer, a sure sign that you haven't a leg on which to stand. (
Correction. Willingham was executed in 2004, under Perry's governorship).

Now I’m against the death penalty. Forget all the arguments about how it fails to deter and is more expensive than life in prison and is racistly applied. Bottom line is this: State doesn’t give life. State shouldn’t take it.

But Willingham shouldn’t threaten death penalty supporters. Because the biggest threat to the death penalty in Texas isn’t my view. There are only about six of us in the state against the thing and we ain’t casting our votes on it. The biggest threat, the only threat is if the state executes innocent people, then turns around and says, so fucking what?

No, the darker side to this is the rejection of science. Texans, when confronted with a conflict between what we know and what the evidence shows, have long disregarded the evidence. When faced with 7,000 professional soldiers in San Antonio, the 187 volunteers said, “Fuck it. We can take them.” Faced with the chance to fill state coffers at the expense of 49 other states by taxing all oil that crosses the Sabine, Red or Rio Grande, Texans said, “Fuck it, we don’t need the money.”

And faced with evidence that what had traditionally been regarded as signs of arson, was in fact evidence of a flashover, evidence that had been demonstrated in actual fires designed to test the science, the state of Texas and most Texans said, “Fuck it.”

It was painful to watch the Frontline piece on Willingham. The investigators convicted him immediately. The lead investigator decided he was a loser. Who gives a shit what happens to a loser? They could tell he was guilty by the way he acted. Guilty, not of being a damn coward who let his children burn, but of setting the fire. So anything that didn’t fit with that theory was rejected. The prosecutor followed suit. Even his defense attorney piled on. It’s a sorry Cover Your Ass spectacle by all involved.

And where does that leave us? It leaves us with two public Tier One universities when California has nine. It leaves us with a woefully underfunded public school system that faces $5 billion more in cuts this session because lawmakers, evidently products of that failed system, couldn't do basic math when they were designing a new tax system and ignored those who could add and subtract. It leaves us with a school board that believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that brown people had no impact on the history of this state or this nation. It leaves us with a Legislature that thinks dropping Medicare might be a good idea.

We, as a state and as a people simply reject whatever facts don’t fit our prejudices. If we don’t learn to respect science and to respect intelligence, it’s not just Todd Willingham that will get tossed into an early grave. It’s the future of the state of Texas.