Dec. 13 TEXAS: URGENT ACTION APPEAL UPDATE Note: Please write on this case even though you may not have received the original UA when issued on February 6, 2004. Thanks! 13 December 2004 Further information on UA 44/04 issued 6 February 2004 and re-issued 18 February 2004------Death penalty USA (Texas) Cameron Todd Willingham (m), aged 36 A journalistic investigation into the murder conviction of Cameron Willingham, who was executed in February, has produced new evidence that the case against him was seriously flawed. Cameron Willingham was convicted in August 1992 of the arson murders of his three young children, Amber Kuykendall, Karmon Willingham and Kameron Willingham. The three died of smoke inhalation in a house fire on 23 December 1991. Cameron Willingham escaped the fire. Cameron Willingham was executed in Texas on 17 February 2004. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted against clemency, and Governor Rick Perry refused to intervene. In his final statement before being executed, Cameron Willingham said: ''The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do.'' In an article published on 9 December 2004, the Chicago Tribune, whose investigations of the flaws in Illinois's capital justice system were cited by former Governor George Ryan when he commuted the death sentences of all on Illinois' death row in January 2003, revealed that it had asked four fire experts to review the case. The four concluded that the investigation into the Willingham's house fire had been seriously flawed and had used techniques which have since fallen into disrepute. They concluded that the fire may have been accidental. One of the experts said: ''There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire''. Another said that it ''made him sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation... They executed this guy and they've just got no idea - at least not scientifically - if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set''. Another said: ''There was no evidence to support a conclusion that the fire was intentionally set.'' One of the jurors from the original trial, after learning of the new evidence, said: ''Did anybody know about this prior to his execution? Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent.'' Prior to his 1992 trial, Cameron Willingham had turned down a life prison sentence in return for a guilty plea because he said he was innocent. At the trial, the state presented evidence that he had confessed to another jail inmate that he had set the fire, and evidence that he had not tried hard enough to rescue his children. Among the state's ''scientific'' evidence of arson was that of ''crazed glass'' in the house. This was presented as an indicator that the fire had become especially hot as a result of an accelerant being applied. However, it has since been shown that ''crazed glass'' can be created as a result of hot glass being sprayed with water when the fire is being put out. The four experts called other aspects of the investigation into question. On 6 October 2004, Ernest Ray Willis was released after 17 years on death row in Texas. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for the 1986 murder of two women who died in a house fire that was ruled to have been arson. After a court granted Willis a new trial in 2004, the county prosecutor hired an arson specialist to review the original evidence. The expert, one of those now saying that the Willingham arson evidence is unsafe, concluded that there was no evidence of arson, and that the ''accelerant'' initially suspected of causing the fire was in fact ''flashover burning,'' consistent with electrical fault fires. The prosecutor dropped all charges, saying that Willis ''simply did not do the crime... I'm sorry this man was on death row for so long and that there were so many lost years.'' Texas accounts for 336 of the 944 executions carried out in the USA since 1977. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, regardless of guilt or innocence. Since 1973, 117 people have been released from US death rows after evidence of their innocence emerged. Others have gone to their deaths despite serious doubts about their guilt. FURTHER RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in your own words, including Willingham's former prisoner number #999041 in your appeals: - expressing deep regret at the execution of Cameron Willingham on 17 February 2004; - noting new evidence that Cameron Willingham was convicted on the basis of a seriously flawed fire investigation, and that four arson experts have concluded that the house fire could have been accidental; - noting the case of Ernest Willis, and that Cameron Willingham had consistently maintained his innocence, including in his final statement before being killed by the state; - calling for a full independent inquiry into this case, and for the results to be made public; - calling on the addressees to support a moratorium on executions in Texas. APPEALS TO: Governor Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, PO Box 12428, Austin, Texas 78711-2428 Fax: 1 512 463 1849. Salutation: Dear Governor The Honorable Greg Abbott, Attorney General, PO Box 12548, Austin, TX 78711-2548 Email: [email protected] Fax: 1 512 475 2994 Salutation: Dear Attorney General If you have the capacity, you may also send letters to: Rissie Owens, Presiding Officer, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1300 11th St., Suite 520, P.O. Box 599, Huntsville, TX 77342-0599 Fax: 1 936 291 8367, Salutation: Dear Ms Owens Elvis Hightower, Board Member, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1300 11th St., Suite 520, P.O. Box 599, Huntsville, TX 77342-0599 Fax: 1 936 291 8367, Salutation: Dear Mr Hightower Charles Aycock, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 5809 S. Western, Suite 237, Amarillo, TX 79110 Fax: 1 806 358 6455, Salutation: Dear Mr Aycock Linda Garcia, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1212 N. Velasco, Suite 201, Angleton, TX 77515 Fax: 1 979 849 8741, Salutation: Dear Ms Garcia Juanita Gonzalez, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 3408 S. State Hwy. 36, Gatesville, TX 76528 Fax: 1 254 865 2629, Salutation: Dear Ms Gonzalez Jose L. Aliseda, Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1111 West Lacy St., Palestine, TX 75801 Fax: 1 903 723 1441, Salutation: Dear Mr Aliseda PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA PO Box 1270 Nederland CO 80466-1270 Email: [email protected] http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 303 258 1170 Fax: 303 258 7881 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- CONNECTICUT: Ross Circus Returns For Another Run One of the more active opponents of capital punishment became quite worked up last week when Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she would not postpone the execution of Michael Ross on Jan. 26 and would veto any attempt by the state legislature to overthrow the death penalty. Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, feels Rell should be "on site" and even "push the button" to off Ross by lethal injection if she really believes the execution is good public policy. Nave had other arguments to support a position shared by many. Still, he might have had another perspective had he been "on site" when Ross strangled 4 teenage girls (2 were only 14) in eastern Connecticut, raping 3 of the victims, and raped and strangled 2 women in Windham County. It is was hardly unanticipated, of course, that a noisy controversy would develop as time grew short, presumably, for this serial killer who several decades ago confessed to his ghastly crimes. And lest we forget, he also mentioned - perhaps to make sure there would be no loose ends because he is a most exact fellow - that he also murdered two other women in New York. A television reporter seemed amazed at the clamor, calling it "a circus" that all but popped up overnight. One wonders where he has been because this is simply just more of the same circus that has always surrounded a vicious murderer who became a household name long ago and has played the legal system with skills that would be the envy of many law school students. Why, he even wowed everyone in New London Superior Court last Thursday, including his attorney and a prosecutor, with his in-depth knowledge of the fine points of Connecticut's death-penalty statutes while trying to prove his competence to prevent the court from putting a hold on his date with the needle. It is not everyday that someone on death row goes to court to complain about the delay. But Ross has been complaining for years, during endless appeals and hearings, although some say he should receive an award for fine acting. Out of perverse curiosity, I once went to New London Superior Court during one of the early appearances there by Ross to see how he acted. This was when stories about him were horrifying the nation, but my initial impression was that he seemed so ordinary that he might have been the last person picked out of a crowd as the vicious destroyer of young lives. Talk about the banality of evil. Yet, he coolly paid attention to the proceedings in the alert manner of a defense attorney ready to object in a flash to the testimony of a prosecution witness. It was obvious that the state would be traveling a long and bumpy road with him. But nobody could believe how long and bumpy it would be until Ross decided he had paraded on it long enough. Ross' scheduled appointment with the eternity to which he sent his victims well before their time has resulted in editorials in numerous newspapers calling execution virtually extinct in New England because it has not been carried out here since 1960, when Joe Taborski, the so-called "Mad Dog Killer," went to his reward in Connecticut. A familiar argument was put forward last Tuesday in an editorial in The Hartford Courant: "Keeping those convicted of capital offenses behind bars for the rest of their lives is, in some respects, the harshest punishment of all." For some, or maybe just a few, that is probably true. But with the exception of Ross, none of the other prisoners sentenced to death in Connecticut have been clamoring to get on with it. (source: The Day) USA: Murder total drops 6% in first half of year The number of murders dropped by nearly 6 % in the 1st half of 2004, an indication that a 4-year climb may be ending, the FBI reported today. Preliminary figures provided to the FBI by more than 10,700 state and local police agencies show that overall violent crime was down 2 % from January to June of this year compared with the first 6 months of 2003. Violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Among those crimes, the number of murders dropped the most at 5.7 %, followed by robbery (5 %) and aggravated assault (1 %). Rapes increased 1.4 % nationwide, though the increase was greater -- 6.5 % -- in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to the FBI. The national crime rate has dropped to record lows in recent years but the number of homicides has been rising steadily. After reaching a low point in 1999 of about 15,500 homicides, the number crept up to more than 16,500 in 2003, or almost 6 murders for every 100,000 U.S. residents. That was a 1.7 % increase from 2002 and a jump of more than 6 % since 1999. Still, the latest figure was 29 percent lower than the homicides in 1994. The latest FBI report does not include raw totals for categories of crimes, only percentages of increase or decrease compared to the 1st half of 2003. The final report for all of 2004 will be released next fall. The preliminary figures show a 1.9 percent decline in the property crimes of burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft during the 1st 6 months of 2004. In addition, the FBI said arson was down by 6.8 % from January to June. (source : Associated Press)
