Junk Science and the Execution Of an Innocent Man
Two-year-old Amber Willingham, along with her younger twin sisters, Karmon and Kameron, died in a fire on December 23, 1991 in Corsicana, Texas. Their father Cameron Todd Willingham escaped from the fire, was tried, and eventually executed for their deaths. The expert testimony offered against him to prove arson was “junk science.”2 The case has since become infamous—the subject of an award-winning New Yorker article,3 numerous newspaper accounts, 4 and several television shows. 5 It also became enmeshed in the death penalty debate6 and the reelection of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who refused to grant a stay of execution after a noted expert submitted a report debunking the arson “science” offered at Willingham’s trial.7 The Governor later attempted to de-rail an investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission into the arson evidence presented at Willingham’s trial.8
Whatever else the Willingham case may stand for, it is a trenchant illustration of the judicial acceptance of expert testimony devoid of empirical support and the legal system’s inability to effectively police such testimony. The National Academy of Science’s landmark 2009 report on forensic science, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, made the breathtaking observation that, “[a]mong existing forensic methods, only nuclear DNA analysis has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between an evidentiary sample and a specific individual or source.”9 The report went on to observe: “In a number of forensic science disciplines, forensic science professionals have yet to establish either the validity of their approach or the accuracy of their conclusions, and the courts have been utterly ineffective in addressing this problem.”10 Moreover, recent studies document the role that forensic science played in convicting the innocent. 11 The Willingham case also highlights the corrosive effect of death-penalty politics—the extraordinary lengths a state has undertaken to avoid investigating the possibility that it had executed an innocent man.
