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Summary Of The Todd Willingham Case

470 Words2 Pages

My opinion on the Todd Willingham case is actually very simple: Evidence lies. Mr. Willingham was the victim of a combination of a greedy prosecution seeking a conviction in what “appeared” to be a cut and dry case and his own cowardice, both of which directly led to his conviction and subsequent execution. The documentary did a good job of painting Todd in a negative light, so negative that when asked who thought he was guilty midway through, the vast majority of our class thought he was. This is actually a real life representation of how the jury and prosecution probably felt until they were presented with new evidence. Mr. Willingham had a history of domestic abuse of his wife and because of this and the domestic nature of the crime it …show more content…

Willingham contributed to his own execution by being a coward. Now, this may come off as judgmental or abrasive but because he never made an attempt to save his children there was no physical evidence on him to corroborate his story. Even though he was actually innocent of the crime, this looked very guilty because he lied about what happened. Being a coward isn't a crime and this was an internal conflict he was having within himself that led to his demise. I started to doubt his guilt when the Corsicana prosecutor’s claimed there was an accelerant on the floor poured in the pattern of a pentagram. This was probably the most absurd claim I heard throughout the entire video because Mr. Willingham may have had a history of alcoholism and abuse but satanism? It seemed like the prosecution was going to do whatever they had to do to get a conviction and it didn’t matter how they assassinated his character in the process specifically because the “unbiased jury of his peers” already knew the type of person he was. Following his conviction there was a claim that Mr. Willingham had given a jailhouse confession to someone whom he had no prior affiliation with. This didn't make sense and once again damaged his character to the point where even when his innocence was proven he was still

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