[PAA-Discuss] Film Review Willingham case / Book challenges capital sentences

[Juli Kring]

film review

Incendiary: The Willingham Case----REVIEWED By Kimberley Jones

Depending on your point of view - and, perhaps, your political persuasion -
the name Cameron Todd Willingham incites different reactions. Texas Gov.
Perry calls him a monster. His own defense attorney calls him a psychopath.
Others call him - or rather, call his conviction in 1992 and his subsequent
execution in 2004 - a jaw-dropping miscarriage of justice.

In 1991, a few days shy of Christmas, Willingham's house in Corsicana,
Texas, burned down with his 3 toddler daughters still inside. Willingham
escaped with minor burns. He attempted to re-enter the house and was
eventually restrained by police officers to prevent further injury to
himself or to others. 2 weeks 
later, Willingham was arrested and charged with murder. He was offered a
plea bargain - confess to setting the fire and he'd get life, said the state

prosecutors - but Willingham declined. He was found guilty and executed by
the state of Texas in 2004. He never - publicly, at least - stopped
insisting he was innocent.

As its title suggests, the locally produced Incendiary: The Willingham Case
is concerned with the case, not the person of Willingham, who seems pretty 
universally accepted to have been physically abusive to his wife and, as one

attorney puts it, an "SOB" Both sides of the death-penalty debate have
enlisted the example of Willingham to their cause, painting him alternately
a martyr or a poster "monster" for the state getting it right. But
Incendiary smartly sidesteps that firestorm to focus on the science used to
convict Willingham. Junk science, it turns out.

The case against Willingham was premised on the idea that the fire was
arson; that's what the fire marshals on the scene determined, using the
standards widely practiced at the time, bolstered by a common attitude that
fire investigation is an art, not a science. But when Willingham's advocates
later brought in fire experts to re-examine the investigation - including
the raggedy-bearded Gerald Hurst (who invented the Mylar balloon,
incidentally) and John Lentini - they determined that evidence of arson was
inconclusive. Ergo: no proof of arson, no proof of murder.

Incendiary, which won the Louis Black Award at the 2011 South by Southwest
Film Festival, gets technical fast. Luckily, fire is an incredibly cinematic
thing, and Lentini and Hurst, both of whom are interviewed extensively here,
are articulate, animated speakers. As the fire experts dismantle the
prosecution's case, co-directors Steve Mims (a longtime fixture in the
Austin filmmaking and teaching community) and Joe Bailey Jr. (a law school
graduate and former student of Mims') artfully illustrate the technical
aspects of the case, taking concepts like "crazed glass" and making them
concrete and easy to understand.

The film also follows the efforts of the Texas Forensic Science Commission
to re-evaluate the case - efforts that were undermined from within when
Perry abruptly removed three members of the committee and installed a
combative new chairman for whom "transparency" appeared to be a very dirty
word indeed. Scientific inquiry bumps up against political maneuvering -
wanna guess which side comes out on top?

Aggravated by his opponents' political rhetoric and special flair for
twisting words (undermining accredited fire investigators' authority by
referring to them repeatedly as "supposed" experts or "so-called" experts,
for instance), Hurst worries to the camera about what he calls the current
"anti-intellectual" climate in our country. Well, you know what they say:
Everything's bigger in Texas, including the irrational hostility toward
science, toward learning, toward temperance, as Mims and Bailey's well-made,
deeply disheartening film demonstrates.

(source: Austin Chronicle)

********************

Book challenges capital punishment sentences----Panel discussion describes 
release of innocent death row inmate after 14 years

As a response to the debate on capital punishment in US politics, former 
Mexican Consul General of Houston Ricardo Ampudia advocated for the
eradication of the procedure in his latest book, "Black, Brown and
Invisible: Minorities on Death Row," at a panel discussion last Thursday at
the University of St. Thomas.

Ampudia's opening statement revolved around the case of Ricardo Aldape, who 
spent 14 years on death row for the death of a Houston police officer.

According to Scott Atlas, a panelist and former member of the Vinson &
Elkins firm, Aldape was the first Mexican national released from death row.

"Aldape was innocent," Ampudia said. "He was a victim of irrationality, 
xenophobia and a legal system that wanted to find a scapegoat."

4 months after Aldape was released from the Texas prison system he returned
to Mexico, where he died in a car accident on his way home.

Ampudia remembers when he heard the news and afterwards devoted four years
to writing this book.

"Ricardo Aldape's case was a part of my life," Ampudia said. "As part of my 
consulate duties I had to pick up the case and interview him more than 15 
times, examine the facts and plan a strategy. All of this made me have a
very close relationship with him. My duty was to support and defend my
fellow citizen."

At the time, the death penalty was still practiced in Mexico, so Ampudia was
no stranger to the concept. Yet, as a government official this proved to be
one of his most daunting tasks.

"My work was to protect and advise Mexican nationals who have different
kinds of problems in this country," Ampudia said.

"Dealing with the topic of death penalty was a daunting task. I remember the

look in the eyes of my Mexican compatriots as they were about to lose their 
lives at the hands of our northern neighbors."

During his tenure as the Mexican consul general, Ampudia had 9 cases of
Mexican nationals on death row. Aldape's case was unique to Ampudia, who
described how he handled the case.

"I examined this phenomenon from a different position," Ampudia said.

"I tried to make him feel through my words and my actions that he was not
alone in a strange land and that his own nation did not abandon him."

This case was compared to the case of Anthony Graves, who was also released 
from death row. Nicole Casarez, a panelist and professor at the University
of St. Thomas, shared the details of her effort to exonerate Graves.

"Those who have seen people on death row have seen the anguish not only of
the condemned, but their family," Ampudia said.

"I insist that the idea of an eye for an eye has not worked. Crime has not 
reduced due to the death penalty. I believe, from my experiences of seeing 
people sentenced to their death, that this is not the answer."

(source: The (Univ. Houston) Daily Cougar)

*****



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