New Yorker Story On Innocent Killed By Death Penalty: "Trial By Fire" - Must Read....

[BlooInBloo]

A wonderful, sad story. It's fairly long, but any with the capacity for an extended story are in for a treat. A sad treat, but a treat nonetheless.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=1

Cameron Todd Willingham in his cell on death row, in 1994. He insisted upon his innocence in the deaths of his children and refused an offer to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. Photograph by Ken Light


The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.

Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside.

...

[EmeraldCityGrl]

1. Great read. Unbelievable tragedy upon tragedy.

At the end when Willingham confesses he never entered the children's room, you just know this poor man beat himself up over this
during all those years.

In cases where the science used to convict is not fully evolved, there should never be a death sentence allowed.Technology can change within the
span of a lifetime as this case tragically proves.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Shameless self-kick just because I can. And it's a worthwhile story.

[Batgirl]

3. kicked/recommended - nt