From the Houston Chronicle:

Related story here….

Despite repeated rebuffs by the state of Texas, relatives of Cameron Todd Willingham on Wednesday again will try to get officials to admit that the Corsicana man was wrongly executed eight years ago for the 1991 deaths of his three young children in a Christmas-season fire.

Eugenia Willingham, the convicted killer’s stepmother, and two of his cousins are scheduled to join lawyers from the New York-based Innocence Project in Austin to announce they will ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend a posthumous pardon.

Also to be present is Ernest Willis, a West Texas man who spent 17 years on death row for the 1986 suspected arson murders of two Iraan women. In December 2004, 10 months after Willingham’s execution, Willis was freed when a Pecos County district attorney concluded the fire in his case likely had been accidental.

A draft of Willingham’s pardons petition asserts that “since his trial, scientific advances have shattered every assumption underlying the testimony of the two fire investigators who declared to the jury and the court that Willingham had set the fire that killed his children. In fact, today, no credible arson expert would make such a declaration.”

Willingham’s relatives could not immediately be reached for comment, but in a statement released Tuesday, the killer’s stepmother said “it was Todd’s last wish that we help clear his name.” His cousin, Patricia Willingham, added, “It’s time for the state of Texas to own up to its mistake and give Todd the justice he deserves.”

Only once, in 2008, has the pardons board recommended that Gov. Rick Perry grant a posthumous pardon. That case involved Timothy Cole, a Texas Tech University student who died in prison 14 years after being convicted of rape. His case – the victim later admitted she had misidentified Cole as her attacker – was a catalyst for a state law providing compensation for exonerated prisoners.

The Innocence Project began championing Willingham’s cause in 2008 when it asked the Texas Forensic Science Commission to review the quality of arson investigations leading to the former auto mechanic’s conviction.

Three reviews of the investigations, one commissioned by the Innocence Project and another by the forensic science commission, found that Corsicana and state arson investigators had misread evidence at the fire scene. Willingham went to his death at the Texas death house protesting his innocence.

The forensic science commission puzzled through conflicting claims in the case until July 2011 when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott shut down the inquiry by finding commissioners were acting outside their jurisdiction.

Although the review led to far-reaching recommendations to improve education for firefighters, commissioners stopped short of finding that investigators in the Willingham case had done sloppy work.

In a separate attempt to have Willingham declared wrongfully executed, the Innocence Project in 2010 petitioned Austin district courts for a court of inquiry. A proceeding in state District Judge Charles Baird‘s court ended abruptly when an appeals court ruled the judge acted improperly in accepting the case.

Baird’s term ended weeks after that ruling, and no effort was made to revive the court of inquiry in another venue.

Innocence Network president Keith Findley has posted the above-titled article on SSRN.  Download piece here.  The abstract states:

This is the text of a talk given by Keith Findley as part of the Integris Law & Medicine Lecture Series at Oklahoma City University School of Law on September 27, 2011, with commentary by Dr. Patrick Barnes, Professor David Moran, and Professor Carrie Sperling. The talks address controversies that have arisen in the past ten or twelve years over the diagnosis Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) (now known also more expansively as Abusive Head Trauma (AHT)) and prosecution of individuals based on the hypothesis that the child was injured or died after an adult caregiver violently shook the child. The talks examine the science-dependent nature of prosecutions (or child removal actions) based on the shaking hypothesis, as well as emerging controversies from new medical research about whether shaking can cause such injuries and death, at least without causing extensive neck and cervical spine injuries; whether the indicators previously attributed almost exclusively to shaking — such as subdural hematomas and retinal hemorrhages — are indeed diagnostic of abuse; whether other causes, both natural and accidental, can mimic abuse and lead medical professionals astray; and whether the onset of clear neurological impairment can reliably be timed to the infliction of injuries so that the medical science can be used to identity the perpetrator (assuming there was one). This talk examines how the legal system is being called upon to re-examine SBS convictions in light of this evolving medical science.

From Salon.com:

Donald Eugene Gates, convicted of murder in Washington D.C., would spend 28 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2009 through the tireless work of his lawyers at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia – but it was not until this Spring that the flawed FBI forensics supposedly “matching” his hair to the crime scene would finally come under broader scrutiny.

The case brought still worse problems to light. This Spring, the Washington Post released the results of a remarkable investigation, uncovering a buried 1990′s Department of Justice inquiry into FBI hair cases, and finding hundreds more cases with flawed forensics. Some of the cases were death row cases — for example, a Texas man was executed in the late 1990s, but if it had not been for the FBI’s flawed hair analysis, he would not have been even eligible for the death penalty.

This Spring, the Public Defender Service also cleared two more people who had flawed FBI hair testimony, using DNA tests. One, Kirk Odom had served 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and has been exonerated. The second man, Santae Tribble, spent 28 years in prison, and is still waiting for a ruling on Continue reading →