In Cold Blood

It’s a pretty sad thing, but I Googled “Texas Executes Innocent Man” and got 81,600 web pages. I had started to try and find some information about Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man executed in 2004 for starting a fire that killed his three children. It now appears that Mr. Willingham was pretty clearly innocently and was essentially murdered by the ignorant, hayseed douche-bags that run the justice system in Texas. Of course, I have reached this conclusion after reading a sum total of four articles related to the case, but the arguments seem compelling, as well as fitting nicely with my preconceived notions about how worthless most Texans are. The point is, while I didn’t read all 81,600 web pages, I suspect there are probably at least a couple of people executed by the State of Texas who could be argued to have been legitimately innocent.

I am not the only person who finds the Texas justice system to be particularly flawed, and many of the other critics actually have some intellectual credibility. The Innocence Project, a function of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, which has to date successfully exonerated 241 persons erroneously convicted of crimes, including 17 who served time on death row, has issued a statement which categorically concludes that the evidence upon which Willingham was convicted was not just insufficient for conviction, but actually proves he did not set the fire that killed his children. Willingham was convicted based upon the testimony of alleged arson experts and the word of a jailhouse snitch who claimed Willingham had confessed to him during pretrial detention. Subsequent analysis of the forensic evidence, much of it prior to Willingham’s execution, demonstrated appalling incompetence on the part of the fire investigators and a generally perverse reluctance on the part of the prosecution to be persuaded by reason.

Let me state for the record, that I am not opposed in principle to the concept of murderers and other egregious scum paying for their intolerable actions with their lives. There are a lot of people without whom this world would be a much better place for the rest of us and I’m not completely convinced that there is a whole lot of difference between shooting a rabid fox and electrocuting some of the people within, and perhaps outside of, our numerous prison systems. The real issue from my perspective is upon what, or whom, shall this power of life and death be bestowed? What individuals or institutions have the acumen and objectivity to ensure to a metaphysical certainty that a mistake is not going to be made in terminating a fellow human’s life? Could that be twelve average Texans? Could it be a judge elected by average Texans? Could it be a Texas prosecutor whose future professional and political prospects are tied directly to conviction rate? Would you want your life in the hands of these people if you were falsely accused of a heinous crime? Can people who believe in astrology in greater numbers than accept evolution be trusted with anything important?

I continue to find it ironic that people who typically trust the government least in all things seem to be the most ardent suportors of the state depriving citizens of their lives. It occurs to me that a whole lot of us are just sour, hateful people who have allowed our own envy, resentment and frustration at the imperfections of ourselves and others to color the way we view public policy issues. The United States is one of the few industrialized, Western nations that even still has a death penalty and yet we continue to have the highest murder rates of any “civilized” nation and we incarcerate a percentage of our population more reminisant of Communist China or the old Soviet Union. Clearly whatever we are doing with respect to crime and punishment isn’t working very well, and continuing to execute people while accepting the inherent risk of the morally objectionable prospect of offing an innocent citizen by mistake, when this approach doesn’t contribute to the welfare of our society, just doesn’t make any sense.

As with almost all controversial issues in our society there is often complexity that cannot even be properly generalized in 1000 words, let alone comprehensively explored. However, I am sure that was not what was on the mind of Cameron Todd Willingham on February 17, 2004 as he was being led to the death chamber. Willingham was far from a perfect man, but he wasn’t much worse than most of the rest of us if the truth be told, and even people who are a little rough around the edges might take exception to being accused of burning their three little girls alive. As he approached his final moments, among the fear and anger and regret there may also have been a sense that the world had lost its moral center, that people no longer cared about truth, but only sought the most convenient blame, that no one involved in his life took seriously their responsibilities to objectivity and fairness, that people were willing to accept just about any ridiculous crap as long as they weren’t troubled by intellectual effort, that he was less than human to the blood-thirsty masses yearning for a brief respite from the grinding boredom of their lives and that the State of Texas sucked. And he would have been right.