Analysis Of Todd Willingham’s Case: Executing The Innocent

People do not get to choose who lives and who dies on the Earth. Putting a murderer to death does not getting back their loved one, but provides justice to all people. Keeping all murders alive, may approves the value of human life, but keeping murders alive cheapens human life because it underestimates murder. It is hard to say all murders should be killed and no one should be alive. There is not comparison between the natural end of a human life and watching healthy person be tied to a table and kill. The choice to kill transform that event into something darker. Executing the innocent is not the issue but whether we should be executing the guilty or not. It is all depends on rate of murder in the country. Some countries do not focus on the death penalty or life sentence such as Norway, but they focus on rehabilitation to put them back in to society. The death penalty is one of those things is natural to want but we should not necessary have.

Cameron Todd Willingham was a man from Corsicana, Texas, sentenced of murder his three children by burning on December 1991. He struggled for his innocence during his 12 years on the death row, but he was executed in Texas in 2004. A few days before his execution Dr. Gerald Hurst, arson scientist decided to take on Willingham’s case without charge. Dr. Hurt has extraordinary experience of fir and explosives. He began to investigate, but his conclusions were shocking. Manuel Vasquez is the state assistant fire officer argued that the house got burned because of a liquid accelerant, but Dr. Hurst was capable to disprove this idea from Vasquez. Vasquez used crazed glass against Willingham because it is caused by high temperature. But the extreme temperature makes pressure on the glass and causes it to crack. Vasquez believed that Willingham used accelerant to kill his children.

Although all the negative evidence that Vasquez used against Willingham, but Dr. Hurst could get better explanation. There was a man thirty-five years old called Gerald Wayne Lewis. His pattern of fire was similar as Willingham’s story. The result was the same pattern. The fire overcame the couch and then began looking for oxygen to grow and created a V-shape. The other things that caused Willingham problems was witnesses testimony that they told him to go back to grab his children before the fire became big. All these things mentioned above, convinced people that he started the fire. Unfortunately, is too late for Willingham’s life to be saved after all faulty science and negative evidences.