More than a decade after his execution, Cameron Todd Willingham is still a pawn in the debate over the death penalty.
Opponents of capital punishment say Willingham’s is a clear case of an inmate being wrongfully executed, while the original prosecutor and state of Texas have been steadfast in their assertion that Willingham should be no one’s cause célèbre.
“Willingham was a psychopathic killer who murdered his three children,” John H. Jackson, the former Navarro County prosecutor who handled the case in 1992, wrote in an e-mail. “He submitted to a polygraph with predictable results, he confessed the murders to his wife, the trial evidence established two prior incidents when he tried to kill his children in utero by vicious attacks on his wife.”
Willingham was executed in February 2004 after being found guilty in an arson that killed his children, 2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron. His family has fought to have his name cleared ever since.
The Innocence Project filed a grievance Monday with the State Bar of Texas, asking that it investigate the now-retired prosecutor. The grievance alleges Jackson “fabricated and concealed evidence,” including documents indicating that a jailhouse informant received special treatment in exchange for his testimony, which Jackson and the informant both claimed was not true during the original trial.
A story in The Washington Post on Sunday, written by the Marshall Project, a journalistic group focusing on criminal justice matters, said Willingham’s case is especially important to death penalty opponents because it could provide the first case showing “conclusively that an innocent man was put to death in the modern era of capital punishment.”
The story points out that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in upholding Kansas’ death penalty in 2006, said opponents had failed to show a single case in which a convict was executed for a crime she or he didn’t commit.
Evidence and testimony at trial showed that Willingham had been involved in criminal activity since his teens and had been verbally and physically abusive with his family. Witnesses alleged that during the blaze, Willingham seemed more concerned with rescuing his car than his daughters.
Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, declined to stop Willingham’s execution, yet in his final words, he claimed to be “an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit.” Since his conviction, the science employed by investigators to determine that the fatal fire was an arson, as well as a post-conviction claim by his ex-wife, Stacy Kuykendall, that Willingham confessed to her, have been matters of debate.
The Marshall Project story reports that informant Johnny Webb, whose testimony was integral to convicting Willingham, now says he lied on the witness stand in exchange for favors from Jackson. The story also alleges that correspondence between Jackson and Johnny Webb indicate the two were in cahoots.
Jackson told CNN the letters are being misconstrued.
In one letter, Webb writes that his testimony against Willingham resulted in retaliation from other inmates.
“Here, the state offered me certain benefits in exchange for my testimony, which resulted in sending a man to death row. This resulted in a murder contract being placed on my head. Because I kept my end of the promise, the state is bound to uphold theirs until my release from incarceration,” Webb wrote to Jackson in 1996.
Other documents cited in the Marshall Project report indicate Jackson worked to have the charges on which Webb was convicted reduced, to have Webb released early on a robbery conviction and to have him moved to a less dangerous prison.
In a 1996 letter to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official, Jackson wrote that Webb should be afforded an “out-of-sequence parole hearing” based on his cooperation in the Williingham case and the subsequent threats against him.
Jackson wrote in closing that incarceration would not aid Webb’s rehabilitation and would jeopardize the Willingham conviction. Thus, “Webb’s cooperation in the murder prosecution without expectation of leniency should be accorded some consideration,” he said.
Webb was granted parole in 1998, but within months was back in jail on drug charges, which constituted a parole violation. In 2000, Webb said in a handwritten letter that he wished to recant his testimony. The Marshall Project alleges the note was never placed in Webb’s file or disclosed to Willingham’s attorneys.
“I am given no other choice but to make this motion to recant testimony at this time,” Webb wrote. “I was forced to testify against Mr. Willingham by the DA’s office and other officials. I was made to lie. Mr. Willingham is innocent of all charges.”
‘Patently untrue’
Reached at his Corsicana, Texas, office, Jackson declined a chance to present his side of the allegations in a phone interview. Despite messages left via phone and e-mail, he said he was “skeptical wants to p
resent my side of the story.”
