Cameron Todd Willingham Case Study

Cameron Todd Willingham, of Corsicana, Texas, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for allegedly starting a fire that destroyed his home and killed his three daughters in December, 1991. Despite grave uncertainty about Willingham’s guilt and the forensic accuracy of the investigative evidence used at his trial, he was executed by lethal injection in 2004. The case made headlines and generated a national outcry in 2009, when an investigative report in The New Yorker insisted that the deadly fire was unintentional, and asserted that the arson evidence used was scientifically unsound. This disconcerting account, along with death-penalty critics, has described the Willingham case as being the first legally-documented incident,

The arson investigators determined that the fire was intentionally set through the use of a liquid accelerant. Char pattern evidence found at the scene in the shape of “puddles,” a melted aluminum doorjamb at the front of the house, and “multiple points of origin” of the fire were all deemed, by Vasquez and Fogg, to be characteristics of arson (Grann, 2009). The investigators sent samples from the home to be analyzed for the presence of chemical accelerants. Laboratory results found that only one sample, found by the front door of the house, tested positive for the presence of “mineral spirits,” a material commonly found in charcoal-lighter fluid (Grann, 2009). From this information, Fogg and Vasquez concluded that Willingham deliberately poured a liquid accelerant at multiple points throughout the house before lighting the fire, in an attempt to turn his home into an

Webb claimed that Willingham admitted to intentionally setting the house ablaze to hide an injury, or death, of one of the girls, caused by Stacy; however, the autopsies reported no signs of trauma on any of the children (Baird, 2010). Furthermore, Webb alleged that Willingham confessed to burning one of his daughters with “wadded up” paper in order to give the impression that the children were “playing with fire” (Baird, 2010, p. 12). Webb’s testimony was viewed at debatable for multiple reasons. Foremost, jailhouse informants are markedly unreliable, to the point that many jurisdictions limit, or do not accept, their use in a court of law. Webb’s allegations fell under even more scrutiny when it was revealed that he was not Willingham’s cellmate; Webb claimed that Willingham—who had otherwise asserted his innocence—admitted to his crimes near a speaker, that prison guards easily could listen in on. Additionally, Webb had a history of mental illness, drug use, and alcohol abuse, all of which were accompanied by severe cognitive impairment. This impairment was so incapacitating that “he had no recollection of whether he had in fact committed the crimes underlying his most recent conviction that he had plead guilty to only months earlier” (Grann, 2009, p. 20). Webb later recanted his original incriminating testimony