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(09-06-09) New Yorker's Grann responds to Jackson's Willingham commentary
David Grann's story about the Cameron Todd Willingham case in The New Yorker magazine has added to the debate over Willingham's guilt or innocence, and raised questions about Texas' death penalty.
Retired 13th District Judge John Jackson wrote a guest commentary about the recent inquiries into the Willingham case after a new report was released calling the 1991 arson investigation flawed. Jackson was lead prosecutor in the Willingham trial.
Grann read Jackson's commentary and responded in a blog on The New Yorker's Web site.
Among Grann's observations from the blog entry:
"(Jackson) writes that it has been “omitted” from reports on the Willingham case that Willingham had allegedly moved a refrigerator against the back door of the house. “Any escape or rescue route from the burning house was blocked by a refrigerator,” he says. But, as I detail in my story, I discovered during the course of my reporting that there were, in fact, two refrigerators in the house, and one of them was stationed by the back door. Both the police detective and assistant fire chief, who investigated the fire, told me that they had concluded that the fridge was not part of the arson plot."
"Jackson argues that it is incriminating that Willingham did not suffer from severe carbon-monoxide poisoning. During the trial, Vasquez also suggested this, even though Vasquez had no medical expertise and did not meet with Willingham until about a week after the fire. As I note in my article, the Lime Street and other scientific experiments have proven that Vasquez’s notion of carbon-monoxide poisoning is no more than an old wives’ tale: before a room goes to flashover, levels of carbon monoxide outside the thermal cloud are relatively low."
Click here to read the entire blog by David Grann.
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