“This is a terrible thing to not only execute somebody who was innocent; this is an individual who lost his three children,” said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a legal group that focuses on wrongful convictions.
The organization says it discovered evidence that indicated the prosecutor who tried Mr. Willingham had elicited false testimony from and lobbied for early parole for a jailhouse informant in the case.
The informant, Johnny Webb, told a Corsicana jury in 1992 that Mr. Willingham had confessed to setting the blaze that killed his three daughters.
The Innocence Project also alleges that the prosecutor withheld Mr. Webb’s subsequent recantation. The organization argues that those points, combined with flawed fire science in the case, demand that the state correct and learn from the mistake it made by executing Mr. Willingham.
Former Judge John H. Jackson, the Navarro County prosecutor who tried Mr. Willingham, said the Innocence Project’s claims were a “complete fabrication” and that he remained certain of Mr. Willingham’s guilt.
“I’ve not lost any sleep over it,” Mr. Jackson said.
Mr. Willingham was convicted, largely on the testimony of a state fire marshal, who said Mr. Willingham started the 1991 fire that killed his daughters. Several fire scientists, though, have concluded that the science underpinning that conclusion was faulty. In April 2011, the Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed.
Now, Mr. Scheck said, his organization has discovered that prosecutors went to great lengths to secure false testimony from Mr. Webb, to repay him for helping secure the conviction and to hide the recantation.
During the trial, Mr. Webb, who was in jail on an aggravated robbery charge, said he was not promised anything in return for testifying. But correspondence records indicate that prosecutors later worked to reduce his time in prison.
In a 1996 letter, Mr. Jackson told prison officials Mr. Webb’s charge should be recorded as robbery, not aggravated robbery.
But in legal documents signed by Mr. Webb in 1992, he admitted robbing a woman at knife point and agreed to the aggravated robbery charge.
In letters to the parole division in 1996, the prosecutor’s office also urged clemency for Mr. Webb, arguing that his 15-year sentence was excessive and that he was in danger from prison gang members because he had testified in the Willingham case.
In 2000, while he was incarcerated for another offense, Mr. Webb wrote a motion recanting his testimony, saying the prosecutor and other officials had forced him to lie.
That motion, Mr. Scheck said, was not seen by Mr. Willingham’s lawyers until after the execution. Meanwhile, he said, prosecutors used the testimony to stymie efforts to prove Mr. Willingham’s innocence and prevent his death.
An investigation is needed, Mr. Scheck said, to improve the judicial process.
Mr. Jackson said he made no promises to Mr. Webb. He also said Mr. Webb had sent him a letter explaining that the recantation motion was untruthful but that he was forced to submit it by prison gang members who supported Mr. Willingham.
“There’s no doubt the arson report was based on archaic science, but from a practical standpoint I think the result was absolutely correct,” Mr. Jackson said.
The Innocence Project has worked for years to exonerate Mr. Willingham, but Mr. Perry has argued that he was guilty.
Scott Henson, author of the criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast, believes the current effort may be successful when a new governor takes office in 2015, he said.
Mr. Henson added, “Perry has made his position on the case pretty clear.”
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