I’m always getting to news late on this blog, because I constantly have things I want to say. So although this post refers to a news story from last week, I still feel a need to write about it - because it has haunted me ever since I read it. Last week the New Yorker published a moving, beautifully written feature about Todd Willingham, an innocent man arrested and put to death in Texas for killing his own children through arson.
I can’t stop thinking about it. Todd Willingham woke up in his house to find it on fire - he ran downstairs to try to save his children, but couldn’t get inside their room. About to pass out from the smoke, he stumbled out of the house, unable to help his kids even though he was desperate to do so. Soon firefighters arrived but even they were unable to get to his kids in time. He was completely devastated - he loved his children.
However, arson “specialists” soon investigated his house and apparently found clear signs that the fire had been set on purpose. Willingham immediately became the primary suspect and soon others began testifying that he was a bit “crazy.” He was imprisoned and it seemed clear that he deserved the death penalty. The only problem: no one had really found a motive.
Here’s the saddest part. Over a decade later, a woman began corresponding with Todd privately and began looking into the case. She found so many flaws — people’s testimony had changed over time and some of the witnesses were clearly unreliable. Then she sent the fire records to an expert scientist who found that the previous investigator had not been an arson expert and had made a lot of unwarranted assumptions. It was concluded that the fire had been set off accidentally. Todd was found to be innocent just before his execution and the evidence was all there — but the Texas courts refused to commute his execution. He was executed anyway, even after found to be clearly innocent.
If nothing else, this strikes me as a clear reason to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty doesn’t allow for mistakes, but the problem is that the US justice system IS rife with mistakes. So if you’re wrong, you have just killed an innocent person. Here are some shocking statistics from The Innocence Project, a great organization working to exonerate wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing:
- There have been 242 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.
- The average length of time served by exonerees is 12 years.
- The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 26.
- 144 of these 242 people were African American. Clearly there’s something wrong going on here.
- Since 1989, there have been tens of thousands of cases where prime suspects were identified and pursued—until DNA testing (prior to conviction) proved that they were wrongly accused.
- Eyewitness misidentification testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own (I find this really interesting).
Beyond this, there are so many of the other arguments - that it costs so much more to put someone to death than to imprison them for life, and moreover that it really has little impact on deterrence of future criminals. There have been studies documenting this. So why put people to death anyway? It doesn’t make sense to me.
But beyond this, what this article made me think is that if such huge mistakes are made due to inadequate research…who else is slipping through the cracks of the U.S. justice system? Public defenders are completely overburdened with cases. They are often unable to dedicate enough time to each client. How many of these clients are put in prison for crimes they did not commit? How many people are unable to afford a lawyer, and thus lack adequate representation — like Todd Willingham? How many people are given long sentences in prison while they require shorter ones? How many people are imprisoned when they really need rehabilitation — and then come out even MORE hardened by jail? It really makes you wonder; the system is in dire need of reform, and yet little attention seems to be given to the issue..
