Texas' execution run might be slowing ...
... especially if David Grann has anything to say about it. Grann, in his explosive New Yorker piece on the Cameron Todd Willingham case, cherry picks his data to fuel an already-unstable political mixture. And lord does he play his hand like Johnny Chan. Hell, had I not already read ample documents on the 1991 Cameron Todd Willingham arson/murder in Corsicana I might have been swayed the Grann's onslaught.
But I already knew better and what Grann chose to ignore was as obvious as sunrise.
Willingham didn't just punch his girlfriend "when she was pregnant", he was punching her to try to force a miscarriage. He pushed his car away from the house during the fire, according to him in order to prevent an explosion from "further threatening the children", but he then crouched on the lawn until the fire department arrived.
Grann is right to bust the jailhouse snitch, that was some suspicious tomfoolery from the get-go. Subsequent expert weigh-ins are also right to conclude that the forensic fire evidence by itself does not definitively point to arson, but none of this is to say that there wasn't plenty of other evidence that proves Cameron Willingham did what prosecutors say he did. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is no shadowy cabal of creepy unknown Republicans anonymously faxing in appeal denials; those serving on the court must be Texas citizens, licensed to practice law in the state, have a decade of service under their belt, and be elected by Texans in a statewide ballot. Shit, they have a website.
The last straw was Grann's touching, poetic, larger-than-death quotation of Willingham's final words on the day he was executed in 2004: "From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne." End article. But Willingham's words didn't end there. In the reality you and I inhabit, Cameron went on: "I gotta go, Road Dog. I love you, Gabby." He then looked at his ex-wife, Stacy Kuykendall, who divorced him while he was in prison and was watching about 8 feet away through a window; he twisted his restrained wrist to extend her his middle finger, over and over yelling the words "I hope you rot in Hell, bitch."
Not a dramatic enough closing for Grann, and the reality certainly didn't fit the picture Grann painted of the gentle giant beset by the State of Texas. No wonder he left that, like so much else, out of his already-ugly picture entirely.
But I already knew better and what Grann chose to ignore was as obvious as sunrise.
Willingham didn't just punch his girlfriend "when she was pregnant", he was punching her to try to force a miscarriage. He pushed his car away from the house during the fire, according to him in order to prevent an explosion from "further threatening the children", but he then crouched on the lawn until the fire department arrived.
Grann is right to bust the jailhouse snitch, that was some suspicious tomfoolery from the get-go. Subsequent expert weigh-ins are also right to conclude that the forensic fire evidence by itself does not definitively point to arson, but none of this is to say that there wasn't plenty of other evidence that proves Cameron Willingham did what prosecutors say he did. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is no shadowy cabal of creepy unknown Republicans anonymously faxing in appeal denials; those serving on the court must be Texas citizens, licensed to practice law in the state, have a decade of service under their belt, and be elected by Texans in a statewide ballot. Shit, they have a website.
The last straw was Grann's touching, poetic, larger-than-death quotation of Willingham's final words on the day he was executed in 2004: "From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne." End article. But Willingham's words didn't end there. In the reality you and I inhabit, Cameron went on: "I gotta go, Road Dog. I love you, Gabby." He then looked at his ex-wife, Stacy Kuykendall, who divorced him while he was in prison and was watching about 8 feet away through a window; he twisted his restrained wrist to extend her his middle finger, over and over yelling the words "I hope you rot in Hell, bitch."
Not a dramatic enough closing for Grann, and the reality certainly didn't fit the picture Grann painted of the gentle giant beset by the State of Texas. No wonder he left that, like so much else, out of his already-ugly picture entirely.