By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
CORSICANA, Texas -- More than five years after his final act from the Texas death chamber gurney was a profanity-filled tirade, the murder case of executed inmate Cameron Todd Willingham refuses to die.
Willingham was executed in February 2004 -- proclaiming his innocence and hoping aloud that his wife would "rot in hell" -- for the deaths of his three young daughters in a fire at their Corsicana home on Dec. 23, 1991.
An arson finding by investigators was key to his conviction in the circumstantial case.
The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that investigates possible wrongful convictions, questioned Willingham's guilt. Now the Texas Forensic Science Commission will review a report Friday from an expert it hired who concluded the original arson determination was faulty.
The prosecutor in the case still believes Willingham is guilty, but acknowledges it would have been hard to win a death sentence without the arson finding.
Yet Barry Scheck, co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project, sees it differently: "There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed."
In 2007, Scheck's group gave its review of the case to the state commission, which then hired Baltimore-based arson expert Craig Beyler to study. Beyler concluded the arson finding was scientifically unsupported and investigators at the scene had "poor understandings of fire science."
John Jackson, the prosecutor in Navarro County, about 50 miles south of Dallas, says the original fire investigation was "undeniably flawed," based on subsequent reviews, but remains confident Willingham was guilty of killing Amber, 2, and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron.
"What people missed is that even though the arson report may be flawed, it certainly doesn't mean it arrived at a faulty conclusion," Jackson said.
The nine-member commission, created by the Texas Legislature in 2005, also will hear from others including the State Fire Marshal's Office. The panel will release its own report, probably next year and what happens then is uncertain. This is the commission's first review case; the panel is not empowered to rule on Willingham's guilt or innocence.
The commission's mandate is strictly to determine forensic negligence, panel coordinator Leigh Tomlin said.
Willingham, in an Associated Press interview about two weeks before his execution, said Amber's cries woke him around 10:30 a.m. His wife, Stacy, had left earlier to run errands.
He said he told Amber to get out of the house and approached the twins' room but couldn't get past the flames and smoke. The house had no phone, so he said he ran to a neighbor's home and "screamed to call the fire department."
He did not go back inside.
"The only way for me to get back into the house was to jump back into the flames," he said. "I would not do that."
Amber's body was found in Willingham's room. The twins were in their room.
A state fire marshal -- who has since died -- and a local fire investigator ruled it was arson, that a liquid accelerant was ignited and the blaze was set in a way to keep anyone from reaching the children. Prosecutors arrested Willingham two weeks later.
Jackson, the Navarro County prosecutor, said the multiple deaths -- not the arson -- made it a capital murder case. But he acknowledged that without an arson determination the capital conviction would have been difficult.
"I'm not sure the evidence would have sustained a conviction from a legal standpoint if we hadn't been able to prove a fire of incendiary arson," he said.
