Criminal Arrogance

Cameron Todd Willingham

We have written about the Cameron Todd Willingham case before. We devoted several chapters to it in Law & Disorder, out this month in paperback, and we revisited it in this column in March, when the story emerged that Willingham’s conviction for the arson murder of his three young children in Corsicana, Texas, in 1991 was largely supported by the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who later recanted his testimony. Retired judge and former prosecutor John H. Jackson has recently been called to task to account for the gulf between his contention that convicted robber Johnny Webb received no deal for his testimony and the mountain of paper and emails showing that Jackson repeatedly intervened to get Webb a knocked-down sentence, early release and special considerations in prison. Jackson claims that he was just trying to protect an inmate who was now in danger in prison for having cooperated with prosecutors.

To us, the reason this case is so important is because, like the trials of the West Memphis Three in Arkansas and Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in Perugia, Italy, it represents so much more than its individual circumstances and provides cautionary warnings of what should be avoided at all costs.

The watchword, in the Willingham case, is arrogance.

Willingham was convicted of setting fire to his house in a successful attempt to kill his three little girls – two-year-old Amber and one-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron. He was sentenced to death and executed in February 2004. Initially, Willingham rejected a deal to spare him the death penalty if he would plead guilty, and went to his death asserting his innocence.

The conviction rested on three elements: the testimony of Webb that Willingham confessed to him in jail while awaiting trial; the detailed report of two arson investigators; and psychological testimony that Willingham being into heavy metal music and his tattoos of skulls and dragons proved that he had a violent personality.

It is possible that the arson investigators’ testimony alone would have been enough to convict him. On the other hand, Webb has since said that Jackson impressed upon him how critical his testimony was to get this guilty man convicted; even to the point of saying something to the effect of, “What if it had been your children?”

But here’s where the arrogance comes in.

Before the execution, Willingham’s defenders presented the evidence to several of the top fire scientists in the world, including Gerald Hurst of Austin, Texas, Craig Beyler of Baltimore, Maryland, and John Lentini of Atlanta, Georgia, who literally wrote the book on the subject: Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation. These men independently came to the same conclusion: the fire at Willingham’s home was accidental, not intentionally set, and the local arson investigators had relied on old and discredited ideas and had completely misinterpreted the evidence.

That didn’t stop Texas Governor Rick Perry from ignoring the evidence, publicly referring to Willingham as a “monster” and refusing to issue a stay of execution.

Now, what strikes us as significant is that this is the same Governor Rick Perry who, on the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire in 2008, responded to a child asking if he believed in evolution with, “It’s a theory that’s out there. It’s got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both Creationism and evolution.”

In other words: Believe the science you want to and ignore the rest.

How arrogant can you be when a man’s life is at stake?

The dynamics of this case are simple, yet profound. Prosecutor Jackson believed that Todd Willingham was guilty and so it was okay to use a highly questionable snitch who most certainly had something to gain from cooperation; they all do.

Tim Gregory, the family counselor who testified about Willingham’s supposed preoccupation with violence, death, cults and satanic activities, believed that he was guilty despite never having interviewed him, so it was okay to say to the jury, “In my opinion, there is not much chance of any type of rehabilitation at all.”

Psychiatrist James Grigson (known as “Dr. Death” because of his frequent testimony in capital punishment cases), who also had never met Willingham, believed that he was guilty, so it was okay to call him a “severe sociopath.”

Governor Perry believed that Willingham was guilty, so it was okay to ignore state-of-the-art science.

And when the Texas State legislature created a new Texas Forensic Science Commission, and when that commission wanted to review the Willingham case, Governor Perry dismissed those members who voted for the review, because he believed the executed man was guilty.

But guess what? Belief is not evidence. And the distinction is one that most of us define as the difference between faith and science.

And in our opinion, anyone who doesn’t recognize and acknowledge that difference is guilty of criminal arrogance, otherwise known as confirmation bias – the phenomenon that got Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, the West Memphis Three and Cameron Todd Willingham erroneously convicted.

Yes, we really believe that.

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