Amazon.com: The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time)
Unlike Wikipedia, I'm not going to tell you the story and ruin a great chapter in the Wheel of Time series. As a fan, you already know this is the first volume of the final "book" in the series. Well, if you haven't read it yet, get to it, now, yes it's really good.
First off, a couple of minor complaints. The first is that Jordan, throughout the series used, "had had" in sentences. Sometimes it would make sense, other times it was just pointless, one "had" will always suffice in any case. Now, Jordan died and Sanderson picked up the pieces and is making the final volumes whole, and in the pieces are parts of the story that Jordan had written. Obviously, the part I read that has the "had had" was written by Jordan because, if I recall correctly, there was only one instance.
The second mistake I caught because it's a pet peeve of mine, the erroneous use of some words that are spelled differently, but close to the same. In this book, I only noticed one such mistake, which is actually pretty good, and it came pretty late in the book so it was a little shocking to finally see this type of error when most of the book was error free. It comes about 3/4 of the way through, and the printed word is "where" but it should be "were."
So, minor mistakes, and very few... in fact one could really say there's only one technical mistake in the whole book. However, I'm a little confused... for some reason I thought the Ogier constructed the white tower using cuendillar. I'm pretty sure they didn't do that now, they're just really good at constructing using whatever material they used in building the white tower. If my thinking was correct, then part of the story would not make sense. So, there was a mistake on MY part. I got over it, I've looked up instances of cuendillar and I think I just assumed, and you know what happens when you ass-u-&-me.
Positive things... it's a great book. Period. The story, the flow, things are happening, good descriptions, it's got it all folks. I laughed, I cried (well, not cry, but you know what I mean) and I love that Sanderson correctly spelled "judgment." Not the British version "judgement," but the American, and correct, version of the word.
The editing. Like I said, "had had" was used once, and there was only one real word mistake. Comparing that to every other book in the series, it's a freekin miracle! Finally, I'm not wincing ever other chapter at some wierd mistake that should have been picked up. Great grammar, spelling, and, oh yeah, story. It all clicked thanks to great editing probably done by Sanderson himself.
SUMMARY: Get the book, read it, love it, and I told you so.
That is all.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Iranian Protests
It's odd, isn't it? Protests aren't odd in Iran, of course, but they're not protesting America, the great satan, or whatever, they're protesting their own government. The same government that came into power after protesting the former government. And yet, it appears nothing was learned last time.
One of the big mistakes of the old government was to crack down hard on the protestors. This lead to deaths. In Iranian, or maybe it's a muslim thing, after 40 days there's a big to-do about mourning a death, which would lead to protests, which the government cracked down on and involved more deaths. It happened enough that finally most people rebelled.
Now, 30 years later, we see somewhat of the same thing, except it appears to be a little deeper in that the continuation of the protests does not need to be predicated by a death. It's as if, no matter what the government does, whether they crack down on their own people or not, the people want a change of government. They want their votes to count, sure, but is that all? Is this just about one failed election? Will acquiescence of that one issue, a re-vote, subside the protests?
In my American thinking, I don't think a re-vote would be enough as it appears that maybe it is just a pretext to much more prevalent problem at the heart of the government. Corruption.
When the current government took over, they gave themselves a lot of power. Their Revolutionary Guard may actually have most of the power, even though the ideology was for their top cleric to be the one calling the shots. It doesn't appear to be working that way though.
For some reason I'm thinking their Revolutionary Guard is going to try and crush them, but that it will eventually backfire. I'm not sure if you could call it a civil war, but maybe a second revolution, of sorts. It's hard to read them because their culture is so different, I'm not sure if the people would implicate the whole government or just parts. Ultimately, I'm not even sure it the people will really win unless they change the whole structure, which gives itself much too much power, which will always lead to corruption.
Anyway, it's just odd how history seems to be repeating itself so soon. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Maybe the biggest thing that should be changed in Iran is the anger, because everything since the 70s from Iran appears to be motivated by anger. How about looking at the realities?
For instance, Iran currently blames the USA for all their woes under the Shahs. Why? Well, Madeleine Albright said (from wikipedia):
"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
Simply put, we wanted to develop Iranian resources, Massadegh didn't. So, at Britan's urging, we got rid of him. That was a different era, we clearly wouldn't do something like that today.
Unfortunately, forgiveness does not seem to have a place with muslims. I mean, they still hate people over things that happened 1500 years ago. They even still dress like people did 2000 years ago.
So, it would be foolish to think that their hate will ever subside. Even if Iranians form a new government, so what? Do you think it will suddenly be amenable to the USA? Well, maybe, but here's the catch... no matter what we do, no matter how much money we invest, no matter anything, the Iranians hate us, they always will, and anything you have with them, you better be prepared to lose it. Just say no, to trusting Iran. After all, look at how corrupt they are, they're near the bottom of the list.
No, don't get your hopes up. Things could change for the better, sure, and maybe it's good to hope for that and act in a way to encourage that... but don't expect it anytime soon. Maybe in another 3000 years, Iranians, or whatever Iranians are called then, will be less angry. Until then, watch the protestors and hope that things go right for once over there.
One of the big mistakes of the old government was to crack down hard on the protestors. This lead to deaths. In Iranian, or maybe it's a muslim thing, after 40 days there's a big to-do about mourning a death, which would lead to protests, which the government cracked down on and involved more deaths. It happened enough that finally most people rebelled.
Now, 30 years later, we see somewhat of the same thing, except it appears to be a little deeper in that the continuation of the protests does not need to be predicated by a death. It's as if, no matter what the government does, whether they crack down on their own people or not, the people want a change of government. They want their votes to count, sure, but is that all? Is this just about one failed election? Will acquiescence of that one issue, a re-vote, subside the protests?
In my American thinking, I don't think a re-vote would be enough as it appears that maybe it is just a pretext to much more prevalent problem at the heart of the government. Corruption.
When the current government took over, they gave themselves a lot of power. Their Revolutionary Guard may actually have most of the power, even though the ideology was for their top cleric to be the one calling the shots. It doesn't appear to be working that way though.
For some reason I'm thinking their Revolutionary Guard is going to try and crush them, but that it will eventually backfire. I'm not sure if you could call it a civil war, but maybe a second revolution, of sorts. It's hard to read them because their culture is so different, I'm not sure if the people would implicate the whole government or just parts. Ultimately, I'm not even sure it the people will really win unless they change the whole structure, which gives itself much too much power, which will always lead to corruption.
Anyway, it's just odd how history seems to be repeating itself so soon. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Maybe the biggest thing that should be changed in Iran is the anger, because everything since the 70s from Iran appears to be motivated by anger. How about looking at the realities?
For instance, Iran currently blames the USA for all their woes under the Shahs. Why? Well, Madeleine Albright said (from wikipedia):
"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
Simply put, we wanted to develop Iranian resources, Massadegh didn't. So, at Britan's urging, we got rid of him. That was a different era, we clearly wouldn't do something like that today.
Unfortunately, forgiveness does not seem to have a place with muslims. I mean, they still hate people over things that happened 1500 years ago. They even still dress like people did 2000 years ago.
So, it would be foolish to think that their hate will ever subside. Even if Iranians form a new government, so what? Do you think it will suddenly be amenable to the USA? Well, maybe, but here's the catch... no matter what we do, no matter how much money we invest, no matter anything, the Iranians hate us, they always will, and anything you have with them, you better be prepared to lose it. Just say no, to trusting Iran. After all, look at how corrupt they are, they're near the bottom of the list.
No, don't get your hopes up. Things could change for the better, sure, and maybe it's good to hope for that and act in a way to encourage that... but don't expect it anytime soon. Maybe in another 3000 years, Iranians, or whatever Iranians are called then, will be less angry. Until then, watch the protestors and hope that things go right for once over there.
The Heisman 2009
Ok, now... first off, the Heisman is not just about the best college athlete, it's also part popularity contest. What it should or shouldn't be is neither here nor there, that's just the way it is.
That said, one of these is going to win it:
Colt McCoy - He put on some big numbers, but towards the end of the season he threw some interceptions. People talk of a cream puff schedule, I suspect those same haven't seen him play except for the Nebraska game. And, oh yeah, there was the Nebraska game. The offense was non-existent, Colt made errors, and the only thing that allowed them to win was Nebraska's two costly penalties that allowed Texas to be in field goal range almost instantly.
Ndamukong Suh - Oh... My... God... Is there anything else you can say when a single person seems to completely shut down one of the best college offenses? Colt McCoy and the Texas offense had been putting up some good numbers, rolling over some good teams. But none of those other teams had this guy, and what a difference a team with Suh makes. Obviously deserving of the Heisman, but did the Big 12 championship game have a big enough spotlight?
Mark Ingram - He had a good season, 1500 yards rushing, 18 TDs. Somewhat the opposite of Suh in many ways. In the SEC championship game, he did fine and all, but he wasn't a overwhelming factor. However, he's in the spotlight big time.
The other candidates are all really good players, but when you look at their schedule, or in Tebow's case his simple failure to perform in his last game, and a tiny spotlight if any, they simply will not likely win.
So who will win? My order:
3. Colt McCoy - I simply do not think he can overcome the Nebraska game. UT won, but Colt lost. True, Nebraska has a great defense, but a great player worthy of the Heisman will have beaten another Heisman candidate on the field, in this case it was Suh. Sorry Colt, be like Vince Young and prove it in the title game.
2. Mark Ingram - I think, like Colt McCoy, Ingram really didn't shine in his last game, and if anything, lots of people watched and were underwhelmed, thinking that all this talk was just hype. Don't get me wrong, he did well, but the key to that win was McElroy. No doubt about it.
1. Ndamukong Suh - Why is Nebraska's defense so good... he's the answer. I think the Big 12 championship was a big enough spotlight to show most people what a terrific, stand out, man among boys, player he is. Suh, wow, definitely deserving. Even if you take out the spotlight factor, there is no competition. This guy is #1, period.
So there you have it. These are the top 3 no matter what anyone else says. Any deviation from this is just wrong. That is all.
That said, one of these is going to win it:
Colt McCoy - He put on some big numbers, but towards the end of the season he threw some interceptions. People talk of a cream puff schedule, I suspect those same haven't seen him play except for the Nebraska game. And, oh yeah, there was the Nebraska game. The offense was non-existent, Colt made errors, and the only thing that allowed them to win was Nebraska's two costly penalties that allowed Texas to be in field goal range almost instantly.
Ndamukong Suh - Oh... My... God... Is there anything else you can say when a single person seems to completely shut down one of the best college offenses? Colt McCoy and the Texas offense had been putting up some good numbers, rolling over some good teams. But none of those other teams had this guy, and what a difference a team with Suh makes. Obviously deserving of the Heisman, but did the Big 12 championship game have a big enough spotlight?
Mark Ingram - He had a good season, 1500 yards rushing, 18 TDs. Somewhat the opposite of Suh in many ways. In the SEC championship game, he did fine and all, but he wasn't a overwhelming factor. However, he's in the spotlight big time.
The other candidates are all really good players, but when you look at their schedule, or in Tebow's case his simple failure to perform in his last game, and a tiny spotlight if any, they simply will not likely win.
So who will win? My order:
3. Colt McCoy - I simply do not think he can overcome the Nebraska game. UT won, but Colt lost. True, Nebraska has a great defense, but a great player worthy of the Heisman will have beaten another Heisman candidate on the field, in this case it was Suh. Sorry Colt, be like Vince Young and prove it in the title game.
2. Mark Ingram - I think, like Colt McCoy, Ingram really didn't shine in his last game, and if anything, lots of people watched and were underwhelmed, thinking that all this talk was just hype. Don't get me wrong, he did well, but the key to that win was McElroy. No doubt about it.
1. Ndamukong Suh - Why is Nebraska's defense so good... he's the answer. I think the Big 12 championship was a big enough spotlight to show most people what a terrific, stand out, man among boys, player he is. Suh, wow, definitely deserving. Even if you take out the spotlight factor, there is no competition. This guy is #1, period.
So there you have it. These are the top 3 no matter what anyone else says. Any deviation from this is just wrong. That is all.
Monday, December 07, 2009
BCS Bowl Games 2009
For the title game it's #1 Bama v. #2 Texas. Texas barely beat Nebraska in a controversial, but hard fought game. With less than 2 minutes to go, Nebraska shoots itself by first kicking the ball out of bounds, putting UT on the 40 yard line. Then, in another very stupid move, Nebraska commits a personal file on a 19 yard pass reception. Granted, he would have ran for more if not for the penalty, but the penalty adds 15 yards and I'm not sure if he would gone that much farther. So, within seconds, Texas is in field goal range to win it.
That's when things got stupid. Time is running out, you're in field goal range, you have an unused time out, so what SHOULD you do? If you think you should run down the clock a little more, keep the ball safe, call a time out with about 2 to 5 seconds left to play... well in UT terms, you're wrong. Instead, they try running some plays, lose yardage, and with just a handful of seconds on the game clock... are trying to pass the ball. That's just stupid and it almost, and maybe should have, cost them game.
The controversy is that the game clock went to zero seconds, meaning game over, after their last play, the pass attempt that went out of bounds. Now, the time keeper did nothing wrong because a play isn't dead until the whistle blows. On the replay, I didn't hear a whistle until after the clock was at zero seconds. But, the officials did a review and decided to stop the clock at the instant when the ball hit out of bounds. I don't know if that should have been the case, how many other plays throughout all games do the officials rule on whether the ground crew blew the whistle as soon as a ball is thrown incomplete? I'm sure "none" is a pretty close, if not dead on answer.
But let's hear if for Nebraska, what an outstanding defensive effort that came up a second short on winning a big game for their team. Usually defensive battles are boring games, but both UT's and Nebraska's defenses made it enjoyable to watch, and got hearts beating.
That said, Texas won, and will now face Bama for the Title. It's actually good that Texas won in that the Big 12 will be present in the title game. If Texas had lost, then the Big would not have a chance to upset the best conference out there, the SEC. But if there's a Big 12 team that can do it, it's definitely UT. Just like a few years ago when nobody thought Texas could beat USC, with it's two Heisman winners, Texas won. Now, it's a matchup against the SEC's best. And considering Bama's domination over Florida, well, it should be interesting. Bama simply looks like it's getting better, and Texas looked pretty flat against Nebraska. But then, I think Nebraska could give any team's offense fits... so it's tough to say who's really better. Additionally, there's like a month's wait.
A month's wait. Yeah... to me, when the teams are close in talent, that means the it's up to the coach. The better coach will have his team better prepared, and inspired to play some great ball. Oddly enough, these two coaches are both really, really good. Bama is favored by three points, but that's only because they've been ranked higher all season and those same people aren't going to suddenly indicate that Texas will win.
So who knows, just root for Alabama if you like them more, or root for the underdog, giant-killers. I'm hoping for a Big 12 win because a Big 12 win would help take away that mystique of the SEC somewhat and maybe people wouldn't automatically rank SEC teams ahead of equally good Big 12 teams in the future. Strength of schedule, yeah, Big 12 has strength, Nebraska proved it for sure, as did A&M.
Oregon against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl - bleh. Ohio State always plays tough and have a lot of support wherever they go. They get invited to bowl games because of that, hard playing and lots of fans to buy tickets and spend money. I'm not a fan of the Rose Bowl because I really don't care much for the Pac or Big East.
Iowa against Georgia Tech in the Orange - bleh. I dunno, I like Tech. Not sure why, except that maybe while serving in Pensacola I watched them play a couple of times on TV. Of course the players I watched back then probably have their kids playing in this game.
Florida against Cincinnati in the Sugar - Stupid. Really, it is. Cincy barely wins games against unranked teams, and they get to play Florida? That's BS. TCU deserved to play Florida by its utter domination over teams. In fact, I predict that TCU would have beaten Florida. As it is, look for Cincy to get wiped all over the field.
TCU against Boise State in the Fiesta - This would appear to be a good game... but appearances can be deceiving. The only thing Boise State has going for it that maybe (along with the disappointment of not playing Florida) with all this time off that TCU has had, that they'll be overweight and sloppy come game time. Unless that happens, even though Boise State is a good team, look for TCU to dominate, again. No doubt, with a convincing performance even over Boise State, TCU may very well be considered, unofficially, the best team this year.
And then there's the Super Bowl... well, that's not collegiate and no teams have been scheduled yet to appear... but my prediction is that the Cowboys will not be there. Even if by some miracle they were to get into a playoff game, they'd find a way to lose it. Romo, Wade, or both need to get kicked out. Romo has sucked all season. He used to be inconsistent between games, not he's inconsistent even within games. Sorry, but rare flashes of good passing should not be good enough to keep your job as a QB within the NFL, and will definitely not get you to, much less win, a Superbowl.
Come on Jerry Jones, you're good at getting rid of coaches, what makes Wade worth hanging on to? Seriously, why? I don't see it. Is it something personal? The Cowboys need a stern coach, that's been proven. Landry, Johnson, Parcels... those are the types that made the Cowboys great. Notice I didn't include Switzer, he inherited a team that my dog, very smart dog I might add, could have coached to a championship. It'd be like taking credit for coaching MJ, Shak and Kobe to a NBA championship. Sorry, not going to happen.
Sorry, it's hard to not express my disappointment with the Cowboys while talking football.
That's when things got stupid. Time is running out, you're in field goal range, you have an unused time out, so what SHOULD you do? If you think you should run down the clock a little more, keep the ball safe, call a time out with about 2 to 5 seconds left to play... well in UT terms, you're wrong. Instead, they try running some plays, lose yardage, and with just a handful of seconds on the game clock... are trying to pass the ball. That's just stupid and it almost, and maybe should have, cost them game.
The controversy is that the game clock went to zero seconds, meaning game over, after their last play, the pass attempt that went out of bounds. Now, the time keeper did nothing wrong because a play isn't dead until the whistle blows. On the replay, I didn't hear a whistle until after the clock was at zero seconds. But, the officials did a review and decided to stop the clock at the instant when the ball hit out of bounds. I don't know if that should have been the case, how many other plays throughout all games do the officials rule on whether the ground crew blew the whistle as soon as a ball is thrown incomplete? I'm sure "none" is a pretty close, if not dead on answer.
But let's hear if for Nebraska, what an outstanding defensive effort that came up a second short on winning a big game for their team. Usually defensive battles are boring games, but both UT's and Nebraska's defenses made it enjoyable to watch, and got hearts beating.
That said, Texas won, and will now face Bama for the Title. It's actually good that Texas won in that the Big 12 will be present in the title game. If Texas had lost, then the Big would not have a chance to upset the best conference out there, the SEC. But if there's a Big 12 team that can do it, it's definitely UT. Just like a few years ago when nobody thought Texas could beat USC, with it's two Heisman winners, Texas won. Now, it's a matchup against the SEC's best. And considering Bama's domination over Florida, well, it should be interesting. Bama simply looks like it's getting better, and Texas looked pretty flat against Nebraska. But then, I think Nebraska could give any team's offense fits... so it's tough to say who's really better. Additionally, there's like a month's wait.
A month's wait. Yeah... to me, when the teams are close in talent, that means the it's up to the coach. The better coach will have his team better prepared, and inspired to play some great ball. Oddly enough, these two coaches are both really, really good. Bama is favored by three points, but that's only because they've been ranked higher all season and those same people aren't going to suddenly indicate that Texas will win.
So who knows, just root for Alabama if you like them more, or root for the underdog, giant-killers. I'm hoping for a Big 12 win because a Big 12 win would help take away that mystique of the SEC somewhat and maybe people wouldn't automatically rank SEC teams ahead of equally good Big 12 teams in the future. Strength of schedule, yeah, Big 12 has strength, Nebraska proved it for sure, as did A&M.
Oregon against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl - bleh. Ohio State always plays tough and have a lot of support wherever they go. They get invited to bowl games because of that, hard playing and lots of fans to buy tickets and spend money. I'm not a fan of the Rose Bowl because I really don't care much for the Pac or Big East.
Iowa against Georgia Tech in the Orange - bleh. I dunno, I like Tech. Not sure why, except that maybe while serving in Pensacola I watched them play a couple of times on TV. Of course the players I watched back then probably have their kids playing in this game.
Florida against Cincinnati in the Sugar - Stupid. Really, it is. Cincy barely wins games against unranked teams, and they get to play Florida? That's BS. TCU deserved to play Florida by its utter domination over teams. In fact, I predict that TCU would have beaten Florida. As it is, look for Cincy to get wiped all over the field.
TCU against Boise State in the Fiesta - This would appear to be a good game... but appearances can be deceiving. The only thing Boise State has going for it that maybe (along with the disappointment of not playing Florida) with all this time off that TCU has had, that they'll be overweight and sloppy come game time. Unless that happens, even though Boise State is a good team, look for TCU to dominate, again. No doubt, with a convincing performance even over Boise State, TCU may very well be considered, unofficially, the best team this year.
And then there's the Super Bowl... well, that's not collegiate and no teams have been scheduled yet to appear... but my prediction is that the Cowboys will not be there. Even if by some miracle they were to get into a playoff game, they'd find a way to lose it. Romo, Wade, or both need to get kicked out. Romo has sucked all season. He used to be inconsistent between games, not he's inconsistent even within games. Sorry, but rare flashes of good passing should not be good enough to keep your job as a QB within the NFL, and will definitely not get you to, much less win, a Superbowl.
Come on Jerry Jones, you're good at getting rid of coaches, what makes Wade worth hanging on to? Seriously, why? I don't see it. Is it something personal? The Cowboys need a stern coach, that's been proven. Landry, Johnson, Parcels... those are the types that made the Cowboys great. Notice I didn't include Switzer, he inherited a team that my dog, very smart dog I might add, could have coached to a championship. It'd be like taking credit for coaching MJ, Shak and Kobe to a NBA championship. Sorry, not going to happen.
Sorry, it's hard to not express my disappointment with the Cowboys while talking football.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
The Amanda Knox Lesson
One of these people is a murderer.
The Story
She went to study abroad, in Italy, and ended up teaching us all a lesson. That lesson is this: If you are outside of the USA, and it looks like you might be involved in a crime, get your ass back to the USA. Amanda could have come back at one point, but didn't. Maybe she thought that because she is innocent, that she was safe.
I repeat, if you are outside the USA and it looks like you might be involved in a crime, get your ass back to the USA. The more serious the crime, the more you need to pack your bags and get back.
Listen, the "birthplace" of civilization is by no means an example of a modern society. The birthplace is usually associated with the middle east, fertile crescent... which as anyone knows is a pretty ass backwards place. A baby is by no means an example of an adult.
Italy contained the capitol of the Roman Republic/Empire. They were very influential, and all that stuff... but by no means is Italy a country that you should have any faith in their judiciary. For one, they are known for being corrupt. Heard of the mafia? Heard of payoffs? Heard of Mussolini? It's been in the news, has made headlines, etc., enough to where one should know going in there, that despite the great beauty in the place, it's not America, they'll torture you.
Democracy, fairness, individual rights, it's newer there than it is here. You can be innocent and get convicted anywhere, but it's less likely you'll get convicted here if you're innocent than most other countries. So if you find a roommate dead in your apartment with her throat slit and semi-nude, or otherwise find out about it, get out. Get out now. Who cares if it makes you look guilty, it's better than actually being found guilty in their corrupt system. So get out.
This girl is obviously innocent. For one, she was a college student that smoked pot. No college girl smoking pot can get into a rage or angry enough to kill someone. The defense should just admit that into evidence somehow and rest their case because it's almost like a natural law.
That, and she's hot. What hot chick is going to commit murder? - When you get out of there, Amanda, look me up whenever you're in Austin. ;) - Sorry, she just doesn't look or act like someone who can do it. Plus, and maybe slightly more importantly, I saw a news program talking about this case which showed the prosecutors' theory on how and why she did it as being very flimsy and it simply doesn't make sense. One guy admitted guilt already to some charge in the murder, and it looks much more plausible that he did a rape/murder.
Anyway, no matter the outcome, learn from this and get the hell out of whatever foreign country you're in when it looks like you could get accused of a serious crime.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Pay for News? Again?
"To thrive in the digital age, media companies need to persuade consumers to pay for news online by providing compelling information in any form they want, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday.
Murdoch said the future is promising for publishers that can adapt to the ongoing migration of audiences and advertisers to the Web. Key to survival, he said, is giving consumers what they want how they want it — be it on a computer, mobile device or e-reader — and then charging for it, as his company already does with The Wall Street Journal.
'We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality, reliable news and information does not come free,' Murdoch said. 'Good journalism is an expensive commodity.'"
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This has been tried before, and it failed. People will flock to sites that give news for free. That free site will have enough traffic to lure advertisement dollars. The pay sites will not flourish, will never flourish, because any competitive news org will see it as an opportunity to gain some fast ad revenue. And if you think they will get away with collusion, I believe you will be mistaken.
If anything, maybe news orgs will pay Google News or Yahoo News a modest fee to feature their articles in order to lure people to their site, to turn a profit via ads. That seems more like a solution that revisiting the old attempt of making people subscribe to read news online. That's just silly... you'd have to get the BBC and every other news org to participate, willingly, without collusion. Ain't gonna happen.
Rupert is a smart guy, but he's apparently stuck in a paradigm. Either that... or he's working to get federal money. Hmm....
Murdoch said the future is promising for publishers that can adapt to the ongoing migration of audiences and advertisers to the Web. Key to survival, he said, is giving consumers what they want how they want it — be it on a computer, mobile device or e-reader — and then charging for it, as his company already does with The Wall Street Journal.
'We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality, reliable news and information does not come free,' Murdoch said. 'Good journalism is an expensive commodity.'"
----
This has been tried before, and it failed. People will flock to sites that give news for free. That free site will have enough traffic to lure advertisement dollars. The pay sites will not flourish, will never flourish, because any competitive news org will see it as an opportunity to gain some fast ad revenue. And if you think they will get away with collusion, I believe you will be mistaken.
If anything, maybe news orgs will pay Google News or Yahoo News a modest fee to feature their articles in order to lure people to their site, to turn a profit via ads. That seems more like a solution that revisiting the old attempt of making people subscribe to read news online. That's just silly... you'd have to get the BBC and every other news org to participate, willingly, without collusion. Ain't gonna happen.
Rupert is a smart guy, but he's apparently stuck in a paradigm. Either that... or he's working to get federal money. Hmm....
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Robert Lee Thompson
It's the law. If you are involved in a crime with someone else, and your partner in crime kills somebody... you are just as liable for that murder as the guy who pulled the trigger.What, you think that's unfair? Well, you're wrong. It's very fair because there this thing called a jury. And if you're so involved in the act that the jury thinks you should get the death penalty, well there you go.
But what if the actual shooter only got life? So what? Maybe the shooter didn't really want to shoot, but only did so because you were using some influence or otherwise encouraging the him to shoot the victim. Again, the jury is there to hear the facts and if they find him guilty, decide if the death penalty is applicable.
In Robert Lee Thompson's case, here are the facts:
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On December 5, 1996, Thompson, armed with a .25 caliber semiautomatic, and Sammy Butler, armed with a .38 caliber revolver, entered a 7-Evenings Food Store in Houston.
Thompson pointed his pistol at store clerk Mubarakali Meredia, who was at the counter, and told him to open the cash register and hand over all of the money. Thompson shot Meredia in the abdomen when he did not move quickly enough. Thompson also shot at Meredia’s cousin, Mansor Bhai Rahim Mohammed, who also worked at the shop, when Rahim began running toward the rear of the store. At Butler’s trial, the State offered evidence that Butler also shot at Rahim, and threatened several other customers.
Thompson then shot Meredia three more times as he lay on the floor. Thompson ordered Meredia to get up and get the money for him. Meredia did so. Then Thompson put his pistol to Meredia’s neck and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened because Thompson had run out of bullets. Thompson hit Meredia on the head with the butt of his gun and struck him with the cash register drawer. Nonetheless, Meredia survived.
Thompson took the money and ran out of the store, while Butler grabbed a stack of lottery tickets and followed behind Thompson. Thompson jumped into the driver’s seat of their car, while Butler got into the passenger’s seat, rolled down his window, and fired two shots at Rahim who had run to the front door. One bullet hit Rahim in the chest, and he died.
Based upon this evidence, the jury convicted applicant of capital murder. During the punishment phase, the jury heard evidence that this robbery-murder was only one part of a robbery-murder spree during which applicant, as the triggerman, had committed two additional capital murders.
Based upon all of the evidence submitted, the jury found that applicant would pose a future risk of danger and that there were no mitigating circumstances that would call for a life sentence. The judge sentenced him to death.
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The dude is bad. It takes a certain kind of someone to shoot people, and he shot people like it was nothing. He's killed people. He only wants off because his accomplice didn't get convicted of capital murder, but then his accomplice wasn't shooting everything that moved either. Thompson was in the lead, he wanted to make a bloody statement, and boy did he. Does he deserve the death penalty. HELL YES!
And then I get an email today:
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles today voted to recommend that the death sentence of Robert Thompson be commuted to life. Thompson's execution is scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, November 19. Governor Perry will be deciding tonight or tomorrow morning whether to accept the recommendation and grant clemency to Thompson. Perry could accept or reject the recommendation from the BPP.WTF? Umm, no... ah HELL NO! This is SO misleading. It makes it look like Thompson was just standing around, maybe holding the money bag while his accomplice was calling the shots and killed someone. It was THOMPSON who was shooting everyone, he's definitely deserving of the death penalty. No doubt about it. At the time of Thompson's trial, he had three, THREE, capital murder trials pending.
Call the Governor and leave a voice message at 512 463 1782 or email him through his website at http://governor.state.tx.us/contact. Urge him to accept the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Robert Thompson clemency and commute his sentence to life.
Thompson was sentenced to death under the Law of Parties even though he did not kill the victim. Thompson's accomplice fired the bullet that killed the victim. The accomplice received life in prison.
During the 2009 session of the Texas Legislature, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would have banned executions of people convicted solely under the Law of Parties for people who do not actually kill anyone. The bill died in the Senate, but its passage in the House showed that many legislators want Texas to stop executing people convicted under the Law of Parties.
If Thompson's execution is commuted, then other people sentenced to death under the Law of Parties could also be commuted in the future, including Jeff Wood.
Butler, his accomplice, fired two shots and was unlucky enough to have fired the fatal shot while they were driving off. Guilty? Of course. Enough for the death penalty... well, when you compare Butler with the depravity of Thompson, probably not, so the jury gave him life in prison.
I believe anti-death penalty people would have a stronger leg to stand on if they limited their pleas to cases that don't involve these monsters who have absolutely no regard for any human life, including their own. But, I also believe in forgiveness, and I hope Thompson somehow got to know Jesus and has accepted Him as his saviour before he goes to the death chamber.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Corruption by Country Index
CPI 2009 Table/2009/cpi/surveys_indices/policy_research
Wow. This is interesting. The most corrupt country, #180 out of 180 in the list, is of course... Somalia! Piracy, no real government, not even sure if they really qualify as being a country anymore, but there they are at the bottom of the list.
But wait, there's more!
Just above Somalia, #179 is... Afghanistan! That's right, Afghanistan just barely beat out piracy. #178 is Myanmar (Burma) which is headed by a junta and oppresses people... and they are LESS corrupt than Afghanistan! #176 is Sudan, genocide in the work and all, beat out Afghanistan.
What to make of this, as far as Afghanistan? In simple terms, it looks to me like the government is more concerned about getting what they can get right now. They're being coddled, they know it won't last forever, and so they're taking what they can get while the getting is good, instead of trying to stabilize their country. ...just barely less corrupt than Somalia... wow.
Iran is #168 of 180, slightly more corrupt than Haiti. Nice job with the revolution of yours, way to take things into your own hands.
Venezuela is #162 of 180. Chavez... not surprising. Still, they have some hot women there.
Russia is #146, slightly more corrupt than Kenya. It's funny because a friend at work, who is from Kenya, has told me that about how bad corruption is in his country. And Russia is even worse... wow.
Nigeria is #130, which is a little surprising. "I'm a Nigerian prince with lots of money, but I need you to give me some money so I can claim my wealth and I'll gladly pay you Tuesday." Strangely, I figured Nigeria to be much lower in the list.
Mexico is #89... that might be about right. It's pretty well known you have to bribe the police there if you don't want to go to jail. A relative of mine who lives in Del Rio, really nice guy, somehow got arrested in Mexico and it was a little like holding him for ransom. Once they get their money, you're free to go. You also have to bribe officials if you want anything done.
China is #79. There, if you're caught or exposed as being corrupt or taking bribes... they take you out back and shoot you, unless you kill yourself first. That said, isn't it strange, in philosophical terms, that a socialist society can have corruption?
Cuba is #61... this surprises me a little. They are definitely more communistic than China, so that they beat China in terms of corruption isn't surprising, but I thought they'd be even less corrupt. Fidel Castro, in an interview, showed off some old checks the US has given him over the years for the use for Gitmo. He simply refuses to take money from the US. So, corruption takes all kinds of forms, but it still seems a little strange.
Israel is #32. US is #19. Canada is #8 along with Australia, founded by criminals. Ironic eh?
Wow. This is interesting. The most corrupt country, #180 out of 180 in the list, is of course... Somalia! Piracy, no real government, not even sure if they really qualify as being a country anymore, but there they are at the bottom of the list.
But wait, there's more!
Just above Somalia, #179 is... Afghanistan! That's right, Afghanistan just barely beat out piracy. #178 is Myanmar (Burma) which is headed by a junta and oppresses people... and they are LESS corrupt than Afghanistan! #176 is Sudan, genocide in the work and all, beat out Afghanistan.
What to make of this, as far as Afghanistan? In simple terms, it looks to me like the government is more concerned about getting what they can get right now. They're being coddled, they know it won't last forever, and so they're taking what they can get while the getting is good, instead of trying to stabilize their country. ...just barely less corrupt than Somalia... wow.
Iran is #168 of 180, slightly more corrupt than Haiti. Nice job with the revolution of yours, way to take things into your own hands.
Venezuela is #162 of 180. Chavez... not surprising. Still, they have some hot women there.
Russia is #146, slightly more corrupt than Kenya. It's funny because a friend at work, who is from Kenya, has told me that about how bad corruption is in his country. And Russia is even worse... wow.
Nigeria is #130, which is a little surprising. "I'm a Nigerian prince with lots of money, but I need you to give me some money so I can claim my wealth and I'll gladly pay you Tuesday." Strangely, I figured Nigeria to be much lower in the list.
Mexico is #89... that might be about right. It's pretty well known you have to bribe the police there if you don't want to go to jail. A relative of mine who lives in Del Rio, really nice guy, somehow got arrested in Mexico and it was a little like holding him for ransom. Once they get their money, you're free to go. You also have to bribe officials if you want anything done.
China is #79. There, if you're caught or exposed as being corrupt or taking bribes... they take you out back and shoot you, unless you kill yourself first. That said, isn't it strange, in philosophical terms, that a socialist society can have corruption?
Cuba is #61... this surprises me a little. They are definitely more communistic than China, so that they beat China in terms of corruption isn't surprising, but I thought they'd be even less corrupt. Fidel Castro, in an interview, showed off some old checks the US has given him over the years for the use for Gitmo. He simply refuses to take money from the US. So, corruption takes all kinds of forms, but it still seems a little strange.
Israel is #32. US is #19. Canada is #8 along with Australia, founded by criminals. Ironic eh?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Afghanistan Strategists Turn Focus to Pakistan - NYTimes.com
Afghanistan Strategists Turn Focus to Pakistan - NYTimes.com: "As the president traveled to Asia, his national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, was quietly sent to Islamabad, its capital.
His message, officials said, was that the new American strategy would work only if Pakistan broadened its fight beyond the militants attacking its cities and security forces and went after the groups that use havens in Pakistan for plotting and carrying out attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, as well as support networks for Al Qaeda."
---
Today's forecast, a .10% (yes, that is a point in there) chance on Pak being able to do all that. That means, this so called "plan" of ours is more like a recipe for failure. Yes, that's obvious, so why present and publicly give this plan... to blame Pak when it fails or to pressure Pak to do it and then we take all the credit. Considering how much money we give Pak, it's not a bad deal for them if they decide to participate and manage to somehow succeed (see the .10% above).
This simply can't be the real plan. The real plan must be to give McChrystal the troops he asked for, and rely on him to win. In other words, nothing is really changing, and Obama waited all this time for... nothing. Maybe he really wanted to study the subject, and there's nothing wrong with that. Hopefully he will now trust his admirals and generals a little more.
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"Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.
His message, officials said, was that the new American strategy would work only if Pakistan broadened its fight beyond the militants attacking its cities and security forces and went after the groups that use havens in Pakistan for plotting and carrying out attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, as well as support networks for Al Qaeda."
---
Today's forecast, a .10% (yes, that is a point in there) chance on Pak being able to do all that. That means, this so called "plan" of ours is more like a recipe for failure. Yes, that's obvious, so why present and publicly give this plan... to blame Pak when it fails or to pressure Pak to do it and then we take all the credit. Considering how much money we give Pak, it's not a bad deal for them if they decide to participate and manage to somehow succeed (see the .10% above).
This simply can't be the real plan. The real plan must be to give McChrystal the troops he asked for, and rely on him to win. In other words, nothing is really changing, and Obama waited all this time for... nothing. Maybe he really wanted to study the subject, and there's nothing wrong with that. Hopefully he will now trust his admirals and generals a little more.
--
"Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.
It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan’s continuing ties to the militants who fight American troops in Afghanistan."
--
I feel your pain. However, terrorists left to live within Pak will fester. It would be better to eliminate them than let the wound spread. If Pak provides a safe haven for terrorists, then Pak may be the next Afghanistan.
Friday, November 13, 2009
White House to Begin Push on Immigration Overhaul in 2010 - NYTimes.com
White House to Begin Push on Immigration Overhaul in 2010 - NYTimes.com: "Laying out the administration’s bottom line, she said it will argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes enacting tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them, and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”"
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Yeah... so you expect illegal immigrants who snuck into this country to avoid the tough and fair way currently in place, to take a new tough and fair pathway to become legal? Sounds a little... I dunno... insane maybe? Yeah, insane. More likely, the "tough and fair pathway" is actually going to be an "easy and free highway" to legal status, which is totally unfair to those who came here without breaking the law.
Maybe if there was a fine involved? You know, for breaking the law. So, instead of deportation, you pay your fine, give your address and all that stuff and go through a process. If your address or other information is faked, then you get deported with no future chance at becoming legal. The amount of the fine could be scaled on income, on whether they paid income taxes, etc. But a fine is to be had no matter what. If you don't pay the fine, then you get deported, unless there is a just cause.
The fines should go to Social Security. No, not border patrol or anything else, just SS. SS should be a locked box that can receive money, and only give out money to those who are eligible to receive it. Not that this will save SS, it'll just keep it alive long enough for me to get my share after I retire in like 15 years. :)
---
Yeah... so you expect illegal immigrants who snuck into this country to avoid the tough and fair way currently in place, to take a new tough and fair pathway to become legal? Sounds a little... I dunno... insane maybe? Yeah, insane. More likely, the "tough and fair pathway" is actually going to be an "easy and free highway" to legal status, which is totally unfair to those who came here without breaking the law.
Maybe if there was a fine involved? You know, for breaking the law. So, instead of deportation, you pay your fine, give your address and all that stuff and go through a process. If your address or other information is faked, then you get deported with no future chance at becoming legal. The amount of the fine could be scaled on income, on whether they paid income taxes, etc. But a fine is to be had no matter what. If you don't pay the fine, then you get deported, unless there is a just cause.
The fines should go to Social Security. No, not border patrol or anything else, just SS. SS should be a locked box that can receive money, and only give out money to those who are eligible to receive it. Not that this will save SS, it'll just keep it alive long enough for me to get my share after I retire in like 15 years. :)
Yale Dismemberment
Police Say Suspect in Yale Killing Hid Bloody Tissues - NYTimes.com
Blood here, blood there, her blood everywhere... yet she died of strangulation?
Possibly, before strangling her, the psycho beat her, cut her up, etc. before finally choking her to death. I think that's something more likely in fiction than reality, as long as it is correct that she indeed died by strangulation.
I think the psycho killed her in a fit of rage for something probably really stupid and petty, then self preservation kicked in and he had to hide the body. So how do you get a body into a tight place as efficiently as possible? Dismemberment.
How else would blood have gotten everywhere? Why else to make sure that the area below the sink is spotless?
The guy must have really despised her, or is a total sociopath. Probably the latter more than the former. Murder is bad enough, a sociopath who murders is even worse, and a sociopath who almost gets away with it, is almost the worst, and of course the sociopath who gets away with it, is just downright scary shit.
Blood here, blood there, her blood everywhere... yet she died of strangulation?
Possibly, before strangling her, the psycho beat her, cut her up, etc. before finally choking her to death. I think that's something more likely in fiction than reality, as long as it is correct that she indeed died by strangulation.
I think the psycho killed her in a fit of rage for something probably really stupid and petty, then self preservation kicked in and he had to hide the body. So how do you get a body into a tight place as efficiently as possible? Dismemberment.
How else would blood have gotten everywhere? Why else to make sure that the area below the sink is spotless?
The guy must have really despised her, or is a total sociopath. Probably the latter more than the former. Murder is bad enough, a sociopath who murders is even worse, and a sociopath who almost gets away with it, is almost the worst, and of course the sociopath who gets away with it, is just downright scary shit.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Nationalized Abortions
It looks like there's a new hiccup in plans for public health care. Yes, abortions.
There really shouldn't be any debate about it. Right now, abortions aren't funded by the government, and that hasn't been an issue. If you want an abortion, and can live with that decision, then you can have one if you can afford it. They're not so expensive that there's been an outcry... so why are we now seeing this as an issue?
Point blank, do not give out free abortions as part of the public health care insurance.
Don't try to fix something that isn't broken. If a woman wants an abortion badly enough, she can up with the money to have it done. I certainly don't want to help fund it. And if you give them for free, then women will definitely use it as form of birth control since it'll be even cheaper than using rubbers.
There really shouldn't be any debate about it. Right now, abortions aren't funded by the government, and that hasn't been an issue. If you want an abortion, and can live with that decision, then you can have one if you can afford it. They're not so expensive that there's been an outcry... so why are we now seeing this as an issue?
Point blank, do not give out free abortions as part of the public health care insurance.
Don't try to fix something that isn't broken. If a woman wants an abortion badly enough, she can up with the money to have it done. I certainly don't want to help fund it. And if you give them for free, then women will definitely use it as form of birth control since it'll be even cheaper than using rubbers.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Real Life 40 Year Old Virgin - Mass Murderer
Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage - NYTimes.com: "Though Major Hasan told his cousins that he planned to marry sometime this year, he was not known to have ever had a girlfriend, relatives said"
---
There you have it. The true reason behind all reasons why this guy snapped and turned so violent. Seriously.
Why was he so religious? Well, since he's never been laid, it was a good excuse to those that inquire.
Seething rage? Years of sexual frustration, wondering why he couldn't get laid, etc., will do that to a guy.
Becoming a psychiatrist? Some nuts tend to want to know why they're nuts.
Seeing a sort of honor in suicide bombers? Very akin to why he became so religious, except that here there's the martyr aspect, fulfilling a purpose beyond himself, a mission of sorts that required him to put aside things like breaking his virginity.
OR... if he wasn't a virgin, but had a whore once or simply never had a normal relationship with a woman, or was gay, then that meant he was a profound hypocrite, remember his religiousness, and was torn from inside out.
I think he was a virgin, he lacked what they call, "social skills." A fish out of water, of sorts, that delved into his studies and religion instead to the complete exclusion of getting laid, or any other social activities.
All this could have been avoided if he had gotten laid. Think about this women. The next time I make a move on you, don't be dismissive, think of the good that all the lives you might be saving. Sexual frustration kills. Guys, spread the word. :)
---
There you have it. The true reason behind all reasons why this guy snapped and turned so violent. Seriously.
Why was he so religious? Well, since he's never been laid, it was a good excuse to those that inquire.
Seething rage? Years of sexual frustration, wondering why he couldn't get laid, etc., will do that to a guy.
Becoming a psychiatrist? Some nuts tend to want to know why they're nuts.
Seeing a sort of honor in suicide bombers? Very akin to why he became so religious, except that here there's the martyr aspect, fulfilling a purpose beyond himself, a mission of sorts that required him to put aside things like breaking his virginity.
OR... if he wasn't a virgin, but had a whore once or simply never had a normal relationship with a woman, or was gay, then that meant he was a profound hypocrite, remember his religiousness, and was torn from inside out.
I think he was a virgin, he lacked what they call, "social skills." A fish out of water, of sorts, that delved into his studies and religion instead to the complete exclusion of getting laid, or any other social activities.
All this could have been avoided if he had gotten laid. Think about this women. The next time I make a move on you, don't be dismissive, think of the good that all the lives you might be saving. Sexual frustration kills. Guys, spread the word. :)
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Catholicism and Conservative Values
Maine Voters Repeal Law Allowing Gay Marriage - NYTimes.com: "The Catholic Church was a leading supporter of the repeal campaign, even asking parishes to pass a second collection plate at Sunday mass to help the cause."
No doubt, the Catholic Church seems to be one of few religions that will not bend on their values. Bravo!
It's simply amazing to me that Protestant churches are moving toward the practice of turning a blind eye on not just "simple" or "regular" sins we all commit, but for one that Paul mentions in letter to the Corninthians, who had a lot of issues including sexual immorality.
Generally, we're all wicked and unworthy to inherit the Kingdom. But we can have forgiveness through faith. But with faith there is also action. And if you continue to be sexually immoral, that's not just homo acts but can be a lot of things, then were you truly repentant? If your nose, hand, whatever, offends you, then cut it off. That means, cut it out, stop it, don't do it anymore. Exercise self control like a human instead of going off of instinct like an animal. Adultry, stop doing it. Prostitute, stop it. Flee from it, don't do it. Just say no... whatever it takes.
But no, the Anglican church allows, and Methodist contemplated, gay ministers. So, Protestant churches are shaking, the ground is not stable. Where's the rock? Apparently, it stayed with the Catholics and wasn't extended to Protestants.
All churches experience difficulties. But this issue one that should not be. Practicing homosexual ministers... "Are you fucking insane" would be a good reply. Or maybe just laugh at the suggestion since it was obviously a joke, right? If not, then maybe a reply of, "Get the fuck out of here you dumbass." Maybe without the expletives, but with the general meaning none-the-less.
So my dad asked me if I had found or was still looking for a church. I told him yeah, and that I was considering going Catholic. He thought I was joking. Then he wondered why I was considering that after laughing at me. "I'll tell you why, because the Catholic church is the only church right now where I know they're not going to allow gays or any of that other crap that's going on." His counter really wasn't on point, but he mentioned that catholics has problems with gay priests. That's not on point because they weren't open about it, the church didn't condone it, etc., whereas protestant churches seem to be shifting from not only condoning it, but encouraging it.
The Methodists do not allow gay ministers or gay marriage, for now, but they do say that they allow gays in the congregation. Well, I doubt anyone is naive enough to think gays never attended a Methodist church before, but now the church is advertising it... "Come on in, be open with your queerness, we don't care" is the message. That's not right by me, that's an acceptance of sexual immorality, lowering the standard instead of raising it.
So what's a practicing gay person to do to get saved? Same thing as a practicing thief, same thing as a practicing adulterer, same thing as anyone else who is praticing a certain sin all the time. This doesn't bar you from going to church, church is inclusive. But the church should become a den of thieves, a whorehouse, or gay club, it should stand for what is moral and right, and YOU need to be the one to change your ways.
Oh yeah, my dad also said, "You need to find a spirit filled church." I told him the Catholics believe in the spirit, that all Christians believe in the Spirit. But I knew what he was talking about, he was talking about people blabbing in tongues, which I find to be nothing but disrupting if there's no interpretation. There needs to be order in the church, Paul said as much and I agree. And the only thing worse than no interpretation after someone speaks in tongues, is when TWO interpretations come from it, totally different. Yeah, all things are possible, but come on, I can discern. So yeah, it was fake, and I don't like fake.
I forget how exactly the issue came up, but I said, matter-of-factly, that there was a time when you were either Catholic, or you weren't a Christian. My dad disagreed. ?!?!?!?!? Umm... so I had to tell my dad some basic history and he relented. My dad is no dummy, btw, but he's more engineer than anything else, and I went to a Christian college, and took more than the required religious courses since I've always found the subject most interesting.
So, yeah, I'm thinking about Catholic, I'm also thinking Lutheran - Missouri Synod. I'll take action eventually, but I like to think first. Weigh my options. I don't know where I'll end up, but I know it will be with a morally strong place.
No doubt, the Catholic Church seems to be one of few religions that will not bend on their values. Bravo!
It's simply amazing to me that Protestant churches are moving toward the practice of turning a blind eye on not just "simple" or "regular" sins we all commit, but for one that Paul mentions in letter to the Corninthians, who had a lot of issues including sexual immorality.
Generally, we're all wicked and unworthy to inherit the Kingdom. But we can have forgiveness through faith. But with faith there is also action. And if you continue to be sexually immoral, that's not just homo acts but can be a lot of things, then were you truly repentant? If your nose, hand, whatever, offends you, then cut it off. That means, cut it out, stop it, don't do it anymore. Exercise self control like a human instead of going off of instinct like an animal. Adultry, stop doing it. Prostitute, stop it. Flee from it, don't do it. Just say no... whatever it takes.
But no, the Anglican church allows, and Methodist contemplated, gay ministers. So, Protestant churches are shaking, the ground is not stable. Where's the rock? Apparently, it stayed with the Catholics and wasn't extended to Protestants.
All churches experience difficulties. But this issue one that should not be. Practicing homosexual ministers... "Are you fucking insane" would be a good reply. Or maybe just laugh at the suggestion since it was obviously a joke, right? If not, then maybe a reply of, "Get the fuck out of here you dumbass." Maybe without the expletives, but with the general meaning none-the-less.
So my dad asked me if I had found or was still looking for a church. I told him yeah, and that I was considering going Catholic. He thought I was joking. Then he wondered why I was considering that after laughing at me. "I'll tell you why, because the Catholic church is the only church right now where I know they're not going to allow gays or any of that other crap that's going on." His counter really wasn't on point, but he mentioned that catholics has problems with gay priests. That's not on point because they weren't open about it, the church didn't condone it, etc., whereas protestant churches seem to be shifting from not only condoning it, but encouraging it.
The Methodists do not allow gay ministers or gay marriage, for now, but they do say that they allow gays in the congregation. Well, I doubt anyone is naive enough to think gays never attended a Methodist church before, but now the church is advertising it... "Come on in, be open with your queerness, we don't care" is the message. That's not right by me, that's an acceptance of sexual immorality, lowering the standard instead of raising it.
So what's a practicing gay person to do to get saved? Same thing as a practicing thief, same thing as a practicing adulterer, same thing as anyone else who is praticing a certain sin all the time. This doesn't bar you from going to church, church is inclusive. But the church should become a den of thieves, a whorehouse, or gay club, it should stand for what is moral and right, and YOU need to be the one to change your ways.
Oh yeah, my dad also said, "You need to find a spirit filled church." I told him the Catholics believe in the spirit, that all Christians believe in the Spirit. But I knew what he was talking about, he was talking about people blabbing in tongues, which I find to be nothing but disrupting if there's no interpretation. There needs to be order in the church, Paul said as much and I agree. And the only thing worse than no interpretation after someone speaks in tongues, is when TWO interpretations come from it, totally different. Yeah, all things are possible, but come on, I can discern. So yeah, it was fake, and I don't like fake.
I forget how exactly the issue came up, but I said, matter-of-factly, that there was a time when you were either Catholic, or you weren't a Christian. My dad disagreed. ?!?!?!?!? Umm... so I had to tell my dad some basic history and he relented. My dad is no dummy, btw, but he's more engineer than anything else, and I went to a Christian college, and took more than the required religious courses since I've always found the subject most interesting.
So, yeah, I'm thinking about Catholic, I'm also thinking Lutheran - Missouri Synod. I'll take action eventually, but I like to think first. Weigh my options. I don't know where I'll end up, but I know it will be with a morally strong place.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Get Naked, Get Arrested
The Story
1. Why the hell is the woman walking her kid at 5:30 a.m.?
2. Why are they looking in people's houses?
3. What kind of stupid are these cops and DA? (I say it's either "Keystone Cop Stupid" or maybe "Dain Bread Stupid")
It's terrible that the criminal legal system fails to use enough brain power to keep people from having to spend a lot of money for something that should not have gone beyond a warning or notice that people are out and about even at 5:30 a.m. and that maybe the window should be covered if you're going to run around naked in the kitchen.
Come on, 5:30 a.m. and most people are asleep. What happens if he was out in the woods and got naked, and some stray hiker woman with son stumbles upon him... does he get arrested? He intended to be naked, but did he intend for them to see? Of course not.
This case is so stupid and needless, and perhaps an abuse of power, that the DA should have his bar license revoked right after the judge stops the farce.
1. Why the hell is the woman walking her kid at 5:30 a.m.?
2. Why are they looking in people's houses?
3. What kind of stupid are these cops and DA? (I say it's either "Keystone Cop Stupid" or maybe "Dain Bread Stupid")
It's terrible that the criminal legal system fails to use enough brain power to keep people from having to spend a lot of money for something that should not have gone beyond a warning or notice that people are out and about even at 5:30 a.m. and that maybe the window should be covered if you're going to run around naked in the kitchen.
Come on, 5:30 a.m. and most people are asleep. What happens if he was out in the woods and got naked, and some stray hiker woman with son stumbles upon him... does he get arrested? He intended to be naked, but did he intend for them to see? Of course not.
This case is so stupid and needless, and perhaps an abuse of power, that the DA should have his bar license revoked right after the judge stops the farce.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hybrid Cars May Include Fake Vroom for Safety - NYTimes.com
Hybrid Cars May Include Fake Vroom for Safety - NYTimes.com
There's this thing called a horn... I'm pretty sure blind people can hear that just as well as fake engine noise.
There's this thing called a horn... I'm pretty sure blind people can hear that just as well as fake engine noise.
Perry Losing It
Perry stays secret on many things, including forensics files | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Regional News
Rick Perry is picking a bad time to act ignorant. His defense in the Willingham, "Innocent Man" execution is now not only that, "everyone else said he was guilty," but that Willingham was a bad guy... a wife beater... oh, and he cursed shortly before being put to death. For one thing, just because everone else jumps off a bridge to their death, do you feel obligated to follow suit? If so, you're not qualified to be governor. And, the guy cursed? Wow, you mean someone about to die for something they didn't do... cursed?!?! Wow, yeah, someone like that obviously deserves to be put do death. And we all know how many wife-beaters are on death row. /sarcasm
How very pathetic. Words are one thing, of course, but there are also actions. One action was Perry's removing of those commissioners. Another is that he is refusing to disclose the information he had prior to the execution. Smells of cover-up more and more.
I also read some very ignorant comments on chron.com from people who just don't get it, one actually complaining that the Hurst report had too much glorification about Hurst. Uhh... ok. Say you're Thomas Edison and you're relatively unknown. And you want to weigh in on an important matter that's within your expertise...
Hi, my name is Tom Edison, I discovered electricity. I also discovered this thing called a light bulb that will allow you to see in the dark. I also did (this), (that), and the (other) and am considered an expert in electricity. In my professional opinion, the squirrel formed a conduit and thus exploded due to electricity, and not due to tiny elves living in trees, as the original investigation determined. I base my findings on facts and the scientific method, not the old wives tales. So please disregard the prior investigation since it is not based on science, and let Bubba live. Thanks, Tom. P.S. Don't forget that the courts were all relying on the tiny elves theory as the cause of the tragedy, so this is all up to you.
So yeah, maybe Hurst tried to prove that he was an expert so that his report would be taken seriously. But it appears that either it never made it up to the Governor, or worse, it made it to the Governor and was ignored.
I'm not anti-death penalty this or pro-whatever else. This is about an innocent man getting executed. This is about fixing whatever went wrong to allow an innocent man to be executed. And more and more, it looks to be about a crumbling governor who probably didn't do his job on something as important as sending a man to his death. Where the hell is Ronald Reagan to teach these upstart Republicans about intergrity and taking bold action? Today's republicans continue to be plagued with unethical behaviour and corruption. It's amazing how far the party has fallen. I'm so disappointed with Perry that I'm getting mad. I've already decided I won't be voting for him, but now it looks like he's about to embarras himself and Texas by acting like an ignorant bafoon. "Uhhh, all the courts said he was guilty!" "Uhhh, he was a bad man! Yeah, a wife beater! A Monster!"
Uhhh, you're so fucking pathetically clueless, Perry. This is probably going to be your undoing. Fuck off now, plz k thx.
Rick Perry is picking a bad time to act ignorant. His defense in the Willingham, "Innocent Man" execution is now not only that, "everyone else said he was guilty," but that Willingham was a bad guy... a wife beater... oh, and he cursed shortly before being put to death. For one thing, just because everone else jumps off a bridge to their death, do you feel obligated to follow suit? If so, you're not qualified to be governor. And, the guy cursed? Wow, you mean someone about to die for something they didn't do... cursed?!?! Wow, yeah, someone like that obviously deserves to be put do death. And we all know how many wife-beaters are on death row. /sarcasm
How very pathetic. Words are one thing, of course, but there are also actions. One action was Perry's removing of those commissioners. Another is that he is refusing to disclose the information he had prior to the execution. Smells of cover-up more and more.
I also read some very ignorant comments on chron.com from people who just don't get it, one actually complaining that the Hurst report had too much glorification about Hurst. Uhh... ok. Say you're Thomas Edison and you're relatively unknown. And you want to weigh in on an important matter that's within your expertise...
Hi, my name is Tom Edison, I discovered electricity. I also discovered this thing called a light bulb that will allow you to see in the dark. I also did (this), (that), and the (other) and am considered an expert in electricity. In my professional opinion, the squirrel formed a conduit and thus exploded due to electricity, and not due to tiny elves living in trees, as the original investigation determined. I base my findings on facts and the scientific method, not the old wives tales. So please disregard the prior investigation since it is not based on science, and let Bubba live. Thanks, Tom. P.S. Don't forget that the courts were all relying on the tiny elves theory as the cause of the tragedy, so this is all up to you.
So yeah, maybe Hurst tried to prove that he was an expert so that his report would be taken seriously. But it appears that either it never made it up to the Governor, or worse, it made it to the Governor and was ignored.
I'm not anti-death penalty this or pro-whatever else. This is about an innocent man getting executed. This is about fixing whatever went wrong to allow an innocent man to be executed. And more and more, it looks to be about a crumbling governor who probably didn't do his job on something as important as sending a man to his death. Where the hell is Ronald Reagan to teach these upstart Republicans about intergrity and taking bold action? Today's republicans continue to be plagued with unethical behaviour and corruption. It's amazing how far the party has fallen. I'm so disappointed with Perry that I'm getting mad. I've already decided I won't be voting for him, but now it looks like he's about to embarras himself and Texas by acting like an ignorant bafoon. "Uhhh, all the courts said he was guilty!" "Uhhh, he was a bad man! Yeah, a wife beater! A Monster!"
Uhhh, you're so fucking pathetically clueless, Perry. This is probably going to be your undoing. Fuck off now, plz k thx.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Perry endorses the greatest injustice
KHOU Article
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As if it wasn't bad enough that Perry was governor and signed off on killing an innocent person, despite possibly knowing that serious questions were raised regarding the "science" used to convict, he recently rearranged the commission looking into whether Texas, my home state, killed an innocent man. The result of the change is that the commission is no longer going to consider the report that says the methods used back then, which resulted in many convictions, was junk science.
Not only has a man died from the junk science, but many are still behind bars because of it.
You know, I liked Perry, but this really shows a lack of backbone, a lack of being proactive, a lack of leadership. It reeks of scandal, of a cover-up, and of course a continuing injustice.
Perry could have emerged fine from this if he had taken steps to right whatever wrongs were made... but instead he appears to want to cover it up... so there's something that must be even worse we're just not seeing right now.
Screw this... crap. Integrity is something you have to maintain, you can't have it and then do shadowy things and expect that your prior integrity will keep you afloat. No, it doesn't work like that. When a ship loses its integrity, it takes on water, and may even sink unless you work on restoring its integrity.
Perry would seeming have only taken collateral damage to his integrity if he just somehow misjudged the report, or he somehow never saw it... etc. But this shadowy replacement of commissioners to downplay a very significant event, killing an innocent man, is a full blown hit that punctures the hull. The Perry ship is taking water.
Whether this will cause more hits to be taken and sink him is yet to be determined of course, but it really has the smell of conspiracy to cover up something. And that in and of itself, in the context of an innocent man being executed, is enough to indicate that Perry is not worthy to govern Texas.
Texas needs a governor who not only knows how to ride and steer, but must also know when to stand. That means, even if a thousand courts have said, "This man is guilty under the law and should be executed," if a Texas governor sees that something just isn't right, be it that modern technology indicates otherwise, that he's got a pretty good idea the condemned man is may be innocent, etc., then the governor will do what is right despite the earlier decisions.
Perry said that he agreed with the courts. So what? What the hell kind of excuse is that? It simply isn't the point unless he's saying, between the lines, that he did not believe the genuine genius of a man who has debunked arson investigators who rely on old wives tales and general opinions to determine if arson occurred.
You know, technology isn't static... in an age where AMD and Intel are both constantly improving, in a country where the standard of living increases about as fast as the technology does, how stupid is it to rely on stuff a decade old compared to stuff that can proved today? DNA testing anyone? Hello? So when Perry said he agreed with the courts, he was basically saying he did not believe in modern technology. That's just idiocy. Is he a Luddite? WTF?
So, I'm no longer going to support Perry. I simply cannot believe in someone who either 1. Lied; or 2. Lied. Yes, no matter how you cut this, there is a lie in there, and that is not tolerable on something as important as the execution of an innocent man.
So, who to vote for. Certainly not Perry anymore. And no, not Kay Bay Hutchinson either. I'll have to look into it more, I think Kinky is running as democrat, and he seems to be someone who would actually have the mind to act on something that would cause the greatest of injustices. And if he were to execute an innocent man and then realize it later, then he seems like he would try to make sure it never happened again. But, there may be other candidates like that as well, I need to look and figure out who else.
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As if it wasn't bad enough that Perry was governor and signed off on killing an innocent person, despite possibly knowing that serious questions were raised regarding the "science" used to convict, he recently rearranged the commission looking into whether Texas, my home state, killed an innocent man. The result of the change is that the commission is no longer going to consider the report that says the methods used back then, which resulted in many convictions, was junk science.
Not only has a man died from the junk science, but many are still behind bars because of it.
You know, I liked Perry, but this really shows a lack of backbone, a lack of being proactive, a lack of leadership. It reeks of scandal, of a cover-up, and of course a continuing injustice.
Perry could have emerged fine from this if he had taken steps to right whatever wrongs were made... but instead he appears to want to cover it up... so there's something that must be even worse we're just not seeing right now.
Screw this... crap. Integrity is something you have to maintain, you can't have it and then do shadowy things and expect that your prior integrity will keep you afloat. No, it doesn't work like that. When a ship loses its integrity, it takes on water, and may even sink unless you work on restoring its integrity.
Perry would seeming have only taken collateral damage to his integrity if he just somehow misjudged the report, or he somehow never saw it... etc. But this shadowy replacement of commissioners to downplay a very significant event, killing an innocent man, is a full blown hit that punctures the hull. The Perry ship is taking water.
Whether this will cause more hits to be taken and sink him is yet to be determined of course, but it really has the smell of conspiracy to cover up something. And that in and of itself, in the context of an innocent man being executed, is enough to indicate that Perry is not worthy to govern Texas.
Texas needs a governor who not only knows how to ride and steer, but must also know when to stand. That means, even if a thousand courts have said, "This man is guilty under the law and should be executed," if a Texas governor sees that something just isn't right, be it that modern technology indicates otherwise, that he's got a pretty good idea the condemned man is may be innocent, etc., then the governor will do what is right despite the earlier decisions.
Perry said that he agreed with the courts. So what? What the hell kind of excuse is that? It simply isn't the point unless he's saying, between the lines, that he did not believe the genuine genius of a man who has debunked arson investigators who rely on old wives tales and general opinions to determine if arson occurred.
You know, technology isn't static... in an age where AMD and Intel are both constantly improving, in a country where the standard of living increases about as fast as the technology does, how stupid is it to rely on stuff a decade old compared to stuff that can proved today? DNA testing anyone? Hello? So when Perry said he agreed with the courts, he was basically saying he did not believe in modern technology. That's just idiocy. Is he a Luddite? WTF?
So, I'm no longer going to support Perry. I simply cannot believe in someone who either 1. Lied; or 2. Lied. Yes, no matter how you cut this, there is a lie in there, and that is not tolerable on something as important as the execution of an innocent man.
So, who to vote for. Certainly not Perry anymore. And no, not Kay Bay Hutchinson either. I'll have to look into it more, I think Kinky is running as democrat, and he seems to be someone who would actually have the mind to act on something that would cause the greatest of injustices. And if he were to execute an innocent man and then realize it later, then he seems like he would try to make sure it never happened again. But, there may be other candidates like that as well, I need to look and figure out who else.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Get Rid of Romo
Romo's performance yesterday was not only pathetic, but it got people hurt. No better example was his high pass to Williams that caused Williams to need help walking to the sidelines and to not be able to play.
That's unacceptable. When you have a QB who not only throws interceptions, but passes wildly enough that your star receivers are getting injured because of those passes, then you need to get rid of QB for the sake of the people who would otherwise be playing just fine.
But wait, there's more.
When you have a team that can run the football, and that team is just a few feet from a touchdown to send a game into overtime, and you have a QB that sucks, what do you do? Well, if you're watching the Cowboys, you watch in disbelief.
Yesterday was the stupidest Cowboys game I've seen since a couple of weeks ago. It was even worse than in the early Jimmy Johnson days when the Cowboys were lucky to win a game. Why? Because at least Johnson had the great excuse that he was rebuilding a team. And later, when that team was built and went on to win Superbowls ad nauseum, it was definitely justified.
But this year's team was supposedly supposed to be good enough to finally win a playoff game, if not much more. Unfortunately, Romo is doing everything in his power to make sure the Cowboys don't even get to the playoffs.
I believe that benching Romo for a series of downs will no longer do the trick. I believe benching him for a game won't do the trick. The only fix for Romo, to put an end to his streakiness, is to get rid of him for someone who is a really good QB. If Dallas wants to go places, they've got to get a good QB. The team is actually really good, with the exception of Romo.
Wade Phillips has other problems too. Like the game clock. One thing you do NOT do, is let the opposing team get a free kick at the goal posts. A couple of weeks ago, that's exactly what he did. He was trying to time when to call timeout by... something... whatever it was, he didn't call timeout until just before the ball snapped. Nobody heard the whistle of course so it simply was ineffective and gave the kicker a "practice shot" at getting 3 points. They do it over and he kicks it right down the middle.
Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett may have some blame too. Is he the one calling pass when it should be run? If stroking Romo's ego is behind the play calling, time to get a different play caller. I hate to say that because Garrett seems to be a good guy. But it's time to wake up.
But you know what, if Phillips would simply take control of Romo and get the guy straightened up, he'd probably be saving both their jobs. The team is stinking up the NFC, get back on the ball and do some good, it's not too late to win games. Here's how:
1. Replace Romo - Replace him with someone who actually wants to impress, someone who is hungry and doesn't have multiple millions to cushion the fall. Someone who is eager to play and just needs a chance. Or, someone who's already proven that they have what it takes. Unfortunately those are already taken right now, so the eager new guy is the best bet. Now is the best time for it because the running game gives a new QB time to learn.
2. Look at what is going right (running game), and expand on it for game days. Look at what is going wrong (passing game), and fix it on practice days.
3. Temporarily take control of anything and everything else that needs attention. Show everyone that you mean business, that your team will not become the Detroil Lions, that you're angry, and that you won't be happy until everyone gets serious about having a solid game. You don't even have to win, just play solidly and winning will happen afterwards. See item 1 to help with showing you mean business.
Come on Cowboys, get your shit together.
That's unacceptable. When you have a QB who not only throws interceptions, but passes wildly enough that your star receivers are getting injured because of those passes, then you need to get rid of QB for the sake of the people who would otherwise be playing just fine.
But wait, there's more.
When you have a team that can run the football, and that team is just a few feet from a touchdown to send a game into overtime, and you have a QB that sucks, what do you do? Well, if you're watching the Cowboys, you watch in disbelief.
Yesterday was the stupidest Cowboys game I've seen since a couple of weeks ago. It was even worse than in the early Jimmy Johnson days when the Cowboys were lucky to win a game. Why? Because at least Johnson had the great excuse that he was rebuilding a team. And later, when that team was built and went on to win Superbowls ad nauseum, it was definitely justified.
But this year's team was supposedly supposed to be good enough to finally win a playoff game, if not much more. Unfortunately, Romo is doing everything in his power to make sure the Cowboys don't even get to the playoffs.
I believe that benching Romo for a series of downs will no longer do the trick. I believe benching him for a game won't do the trick. The only fix for Romo, to put an end to his streakiness, is to get rid of him for someone who is a really good QB. If Dallas wants to go places, they've got to get a good QB. The team is actually really good, with the exception of Romo.
Wade Phillips has other problems too. Like the game clock. One thing you do NOT do, is let the opposing team get a free kick at the goal posts. A couple of weeks ago, that's exactly what he did. He was trying to time when to call timeout by... something... whatever it was, he didn't call timeout until just before the ball snapped. Nobody heard the whistle of course so it simply was ineffective and gave the kicker a "practice shot" at getting 3 points. They do it over and he kicks it right down the middle.
Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett may have some blame too. Is he the one calling pass when it should be run? If stroking Romo's ego is behind the play calling, time to get a different play caller. I hate to say that because Garrett seems to be a good guy. But it's time to wake up.
But you know what, if Phillips would simply take control of Romo and get the guy straightened up, he'd probably be saving both their jobs. The team is stinking up the NFC, get back on the ball and do some good, it's not too late to win games. Here's how:
1. Replace Romo - Replace him with someone who actually wants to impress, someone who is hungry and doesn't have multiple millions to cushion the fall. Someone who is eager to play and just needs a chance. Or, someone who's already proven that they have what it takes. Unfortunately those are already taken right now, so the eager new guy is the best bet. Now is the best time for it because the running game gives a new QB time to learn.
2. Look at what is going right (running game), and expand on it for game days. Look at what is going wrong (passing game), and fix it on practice days.
3. Temporarily take control of anything and everything else that needs attention. Show everyone that you mean business, that your team will not become the Detroil Lions, that you're angry, and that you won't be happy until everyone gets serious about having a solid game. You don't even have to win, just play solidly and winning will happen afterwards. See item 1 to help with showing you mean business.
Come on Cowboys, get your shit together.
Where's the Commander-in-Chief?
War advisers must be candid but discreet - Gates | Reuters
It has been over a month since our top General in Afghanistan requested more troops. No answer. The silence is deafening.
Last week I watched the "60 Minutes" interview with Gen. McChrystal, and was impressed. No double-talk or other political BS. He just wants to be honest and serve his country as honorably as possible.
Unfortunately, Obama seems to want to delay action. I suppose all the effort to promote Chicago for a Summer Olympics was a more urgent priority than acting diligently and promptly to approve or deny a request for more troops. Given what we saw in his campaign, it should have been a no-brainer.
While running for office, Obama seemed exasperated that too much military attention had gone to Iraq and that Afghanistan is where the war should be fought. Now he's waffling. What's up with that?
Well, McChrystal is the Afghan man, not the entire Military. We have forces all over the world and we would be remiss if we didn't account for possible actions against Iran and North Korea, and probably a few small hot spots.
So, our Commander-in-Chief is probably trying to learn as much as he can about all the different scenarios, strategies, priorities, etc. ...or he's simply waiting for a more favorable time to announce something new. He's ok as long as we don't lose Afghanistan... if we lose, Obama will be blamed no matter who is in office at the time. So Obama had better get it right.
It has been over a month since our top General in Afghanistan requested more troops. No answer. The silence is deafening.
Last week I watched the "60 Minutes" interview with Gen. McChrystal, and was impressed. No double-talk or other political BS. He just wants to be honest and serve his country as honorably as possible.
Unfortunately, Obama seems to want to delay action. I suppose all the effort to promote Chicago for a Summer Olympics was a more urgent priority than acting diligently and promptly to approve or deny a request for more troops. Given what we saw in his campaign, it should have been a no-brainer.
While running for office, Obama seemed exasperated that too much military attention had gone to Iraq and that Afghanistan is where the war should be fought. Now he's waffling. What's up with that?
Well, McChrystal is the Afghan man, not the entire Military. We have forces all over the world and we would be remiss if we didn't account for possible actions against Iran and North Korea, and probably a few small hot spots.
So, our Commander-in-Chief is probably trying to learn as much as he can about all the different scenarios, strategies, priorities, etc. ...or he's simply waiting for a more favorable time to announce something new. He's ok as long as we don't lose Afghanistan... if we lose, Obama will be blamed no matter who is in office at the time. So Obama had better get it right.
Friday, October 02, 2009
The Polanski Case
Op-Ed Contributor - The Polanski Case - NYTimes.com: "Two major flaws instill doubt about the legitimacy of the request to extradite Mr. Polanski. The first goes to the very aims of criminal law. Those are usually stated as revenge, deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation. Revenge is widely recognized as illegitimate. In Mr. Polanski’s case none of the legitimate aims seem applicable."
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The guy who wrote that is a "lawyer in France," as footnoted in the article. That seems a weaselly way of not calling him a "French lawyer," because they know it'd be an obvious indication of his bias. But you need not even decipher the footnote to figure that out, just look at the glaring example quoted above.
Punishment. That's a phase of trial that has been lacking in the case. It's the most obviously legitimate reason to go after Polanski over 30 years after he ran. Polanski went through the process of doing everything but paying the bill, he skipped out on tab that the judge was bringing to him. Well, the merchant was slow and it took him a while, but he finally caught up with the dine-and-dasher.
30 years ago you could also presume deterrence, but as far as we know Mr. Polanski hasn't been hooking up with tweens since then. But then, what about deterrence to other famous would-be tween rapists? Yes, that's the real deterrence, and it's every bit as legitimate as punishment.
Doesn't take a law school prof to see that. But it's pretty hard to see if you're unreasonably biased. But he's French, so... maybe it's expected over there. Who knows.
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The guy who wrote that is a "lawyer in France," as footnoted in the article. That seems a weaselly way of not calling him a "French lawyer," because they know it'd be an obvious indication of his bias. But you need not even decipher the footnote to figure that out, just look at the glaring example quoted above.
Punishment. That's a phase of trial that has been lacking in the case. It's the most obviously legitimate reason to go after Polanski over 30 years after he ran. Polanski went through the process of doing everything but paying the bill, he skipped out on tab that the judge was bringing to him. Well, the merchant was slow and it took him a while, but he finally caught up with the dine-and-dasher.
30 years ago you could also presume deterrence, but as far as we know Mr. Polanski hasn't been hooking up with tweens since then. But then, what about deterrence to other famous would-be tween rapists? Yes, that's the real deterrence, and it's every bit as legitimate as punishment.
Doesn't take a law school prof to see that. But it's pretty hard to see if you're unreasonably biased. But he's French, so... maybe it's expected over there. Who knows.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
LT back at practice for Bolts - Sports- nbcsports.msnbc.com
"LT back at practice for Bolts
By BERNIE WILSON
Associated Press
updated 7:48 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept . 30, 2009"
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Wow, Lawrence Taylor out of retirement and playing for the... what? No... who the hell is LaLamian Tomlinson? That's not LT. LT is one of the greats... who is this Tomlinson wannabe?
I know who he's not, he's not LT.
By BERNIE WILSON
Associated Press
updated 7:48 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept . 30, 2009"
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Wow, Lawrence Taylor out of retirement and playing for the... what? No... who the hell is LaLamian Tomlinson? That's not LT. LT is one of the greats... who is this Tomlinson wannabe?
I know who he's not, he's not LT.
Shocking
VOA News - US, Iran Hold Rare Bilateral Meeting: "A top Israeli official dismissed the talks as futile. Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters in Jerusalem the discussions are a 'waste of time.'"
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How can Israel say such a thing? Easy, it's true. People in that region of the world don't do anything of their volition unless it's to cause trouble elsewhere. If you want them to do something for the good of the region or to comply with international standards or to not cause trouble, then you have to speak with military action, period.
Take Iraq. We talked and talked and they didn't do jack shit about giving us the information we requested or allowing nuclear inspectors until we had already placed the force over there. Saddam simply acted too late to save his skin. Now, we have Amahdinadirkajihad in Iran, who is doing the same thing Saddam did. However, he doesn't believe the USA will respond militarily... umm, neither did Saddam, neither did Kaddafi, neither did Hitler, neither did Japan, so on and so forth.
It's amazing really how these countries continually underestimate the USA's capacity to go abroad and kick some ass. Sure, we have our anti-war protesters and all that crap, but there's a tipping point. And once that point is passed, then there is no stopping us. I don't think Iran has passed it yet, but they probably will, and we'll have to join forces with a bunch of other nations, except Israel because that would be politically incorrect in that region, to bring about change in Iran that Iranians can't seem to bring themselves.
Iran has time of course to change, but will they? I think it would take a coup of sorts to do so. The real power seems to be with their Military. Yeah, supposedly it's the Supreme Leader, aka Ayatollah Khomenei, but come on, he sure seems like he's a puppet.
So here we go again, much like Pak not that long ago, Iran has no choice, it will have to change. Option 1 is a small change, allow unfettered access to nuclear inspectors. Option 2 is a huge change, get your ass handed to you by military force. And it doesn't matter whether Iran really does want peaceful nuclear energy, remember Weapons of Mass Destruction? All we need is probable cause to invade, nothing more.
The risk of Iran making nuclear weapons is alarming enough to invade, without a doubt. They support terrorist groups... remember? Do you think we are going to let a country develop a nuclear device so that they can give it Hezbolla? Hell no. That would be the beginning of a new, much bigger war, where a lot more people would get killed than if we just took out Iran in a timely manner. Insurgency is bad, yes, but distributing nuclear warheads makes dealing with an insurgency very acceptable to those who can realize what the alternative would have been.
If Israel sees an imminent threat, of course, then they'll probably take their own action. Which is option 3 I guess (get ass kicked by Israel). That would be a huge embarrassment for Iran, I would think. Yet, I believe Israel has the capability and certainly the moral imperative to defeat those who have publicly called for the extermination of Israel.
So yes, discussions are a waste of time because everything that can be said, has been. Iran has taken the vow of pursuing nuclear technology and will continue to say that it is only for peaceful purposes, while launching missiles, calling for the destruction of Israel, refusing inspectors, and building secret nuclear facilities. 'nuff said.
However, this time, unless Israel acts first, the US will wait for Europe to cough up resources. No more hiding behind the USA, it's time for Europe to step up to the plate and place a significant force and significant money to the cause. We've spent plenty, and have sent plenty to Afghanistan and Iraq, time for Europe to either bring it, or STFU.
Of course, if they STFU and decide they don't care if Iran has nuclear weapons, then it'll be just the USA and Israel... which is fine by me.
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How can Israel say such a thing? Easy, it's true. People in that region of the world don't do anything of their volition unless it's to cause trouble elsewhere. If you want them to do something for the good of the region or to comply with international standards or to not cause trouble, then you have to speak with military action, period.
Take Iraq. We talked and talked and they didn't do jack shit about giving us the information we requested or allowing nuclear inspectors until we had already placed the force over there. Saddam simply acted too late to save his skin. Now, we have Amahdinadirkajihad in Iran, who is doing the same thing Saddam did. However, he doesn't believe the USA will respond militarily... umm, neither did Saddam, neither did Kaddafi, neither did Hitler, neither did Japan, so on and so forth.
It's amazing really how these countries continually underestimate the USA's capacity to go abroad and kick some ass. Sure, we have our anti-war protesters and all that crap, but there's a tipping point. And once that point is passed, then there is no stopping us. I don't think Iran has passed it yet, but they probably will, and we'll have to join forces with a bunch of other nations, except Israel because that would be politically incorrect in that region, to bring about change in Iran that Iranians can't seem to bring themselves.
Iran has time of course to change, but will they? I think it would take a coup of sorts to do so. The real power seems to be with their Military. Yeah, supposedly it's the Supreme Leader, aka Ayatollah Khomenei, but come on, he sure seems like he's a puppet.
So here we go again, much like Pak not that long ago, Iran has no choice, it will have to change. Option 1 is a small change, allow unfettered access to nuclear inspectors. Option 2 is a huge change, get your ass handed to you by military force. And it doesn't matter whether Iran really does want peaceful nuclear energy, remember Weapons of Mass Destruction? All we need is probable cause to invade, nothing more.
The risk of Iran making nuclear weapons is alarming enough to invade, without a doubt. They support terrorist groups... remember? Do you think we are going to let a country develop a nuclear device so that they can give it Hezbolla? Hell no. That would be the beginning of a new, much bigger war, where a lot more people would get killed than if we just took out Iran in a timely manner. Insurgency is bad, yes, but distributing nuclear warheads makes dealing with an insurgency very acceptable to those who can realize what the alternative would have been.
If Israel sees an imminent threat, of course, then they'll probably take their own action. Which is option 3 I guess (get ass kicked by Israel). That would be a huge embarrassment for Iran, I would think. Yet, I believe Israel has the capability and certainly the moral imperative to defeat those who have publicly called for the extermination of Israel.
So yes, discussions are a waste of time because everything that can be said, has been. Iran has taken the vow of pursuing nuclear technology and will continue to say that it is only for peaceful purposes, while launching missiles, calling for the destruction of Israel, refusing inspectors, and building secret nuclear facilities. 'nuff said.
However, this time, unless Israel acts first, the US will wait for Europe to cough up resources. No more hiding behind the USA, it's time for Europe to step up to the plate and place a significant force and significant money to the cause. We've spent plenty, and have sent plenty to Afghanistan and Iraq, time for Europe to either bring it, or STFU.
Of course, if they STFU and decide they don't care if Iran has nuclear weapons, then it'll be just the USA and Israel... which is fine by me.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Giants vs. Cowboys
Bizzaro Game.
The Dallas Cowboys decided to play the worst game in years at the new stadium Jerry Jones had built in Arlington. George W. did the coin toss, and then later the announcers didn't know how to caption W. sitting with Madden, and the first thing I could think of was that they have about the same intellect, and were both in their occupation too long.
It was a bizzare game throughout and on every level. The running team became the passing team, the passing team did best when they ran. The Cowboys, of course, kept trying to pass and failing. No matter how badly Romo stunk up the field, Phillips kept him in. Romo throws a ball way behind Witten, and it bounces off his foot like a pro soccer-type of move and right into the hands of the Giants.
Romo, in the entire game, without exception, looked like a 15th round draft choice rookie playing in a pre-season game, and without a clue. He would throw it too high, he would throw it too low, and then there was the time he acted like the guy must have been a mile away because he threw it way too hard. No Romo, John Elway you're not, and you're not convincing anyone of that by blasting past someone 10 yards away from you. You should have more concerned about getting a TD instead of ripping it... loser.
I wish Parcells was coaching because Parcells would have yanked Romo out of there, let him sit and think about what a crappy job he was doing, and then put him back in later to see if any improvement happened. You can't let Romo keep on a roll of bad passing, because he thinks nothing of it and will continue to throw that way unless you slap him up side the head and make him address his problems.
Without a doubt, Romo will never be one of the Cowboys' great QBs. He'd have to have a few Montana-like seasons to erase that fine display of crappiness last night. I don't think he can do it. I know he can't do it. He's been in long enough to where it is now, what you see is what you get. I see inconsistentcy, and I see that when Romo sucks, he sucks hard. I don't think he really cares enough about his profession, about his teammates, the organization, or anything to make him want to be a better quarterback.
And how about coaching? Where was it. Phillips let Romo stay in the game... sure, for most QB's you need to keep them in else you shatter their confidence. Romo's not like that though, he needs to know that he can't just play like crap and get away with it. Parcells figured that out early on, Phillips should have figured it out by now. Being all buddies is fine off the field, but during a game, it's business. And in business, you need to cut your losses at some point.
But yeah, Romo totally lost the game for the Cowboys. It had to be the worst performance I've seen (or at least as bad as any) of any QB in pro ball. There's no excuse for it. Cowboys need a real QB, a hungry one that wants to win, that wants to be the best QB in the NFL.
Yes, Romo is highly rated, but that's to be expected from any Cowboys QB. He needs to be more than highly rated, he needs to be a good leader, he need to command respect, and needs to stop smiling after performing worse than a rookie QB.
I've been reluctant to "adopt" Romo for a few years now, and last night removed anything that may have led me to think that Romo was a good QB. A good QB needs to be fairly consistent, and Romo doesn't fit that bill. He has sparks, but that isn't good enough. He'll have a few good games, and then falls apart. Romo isn't a rookie anymore, he's been in there long enough to where he should know how to play. I don't care if later on he's the highest rated QB on paper... he still sux.
Look at Eli, not that he played as badly as Romo, but he wasn't doing that great at first, but got his stuff together in the game and ended up doing a good job overall. Romo, on the other hand, was consistently bad the entire game, with the exception of a handful of passes, some that should have been caught.
That's another thing, receivers need to catch the balls. WTF else are they being paid for? Romo made one great pass to Crayton, I believe, who was in double coverage but it was right to him... and it looked like he barely even tried to catch it.
As bad as Dallas played, the only reason they lost was because Romo was practically giving the Giants points. Simply a terrible game. Too bad it was the opener to that new stadium... at least it's memorable.
The Dallas Cowboys decided to play the worst game in years at the new stadium Jerry Jones had built in Arlington. George W. did the coin toss, and then later the announcers didn't know how to caption W. sitting with Madden, and the first thing I could think of was that they have about the same intellect, and were both in their occupation too long.
It was a bizzare game throughout and on every level. The running team became the passing team, the passing team did best when they ran. The Cowboys, of course, kept trying to pass and failing. No matter how badly Romo stunk up the field, Phillips kept him in. Romo throws a ball way behind Witten, and it bounces off his foot like a pro soccer-type of move and right into the hands of the Giants.
Romo, in the entire game, without exception, looked like a 15th round draft choice rookie playing in a pre-season game, and without a clue. He would throw it too high, he would throw it too low, and then there was the time he acted like the guy must have been a mile away because he threw it way too hard. No Romo, John Elway you're not, and you're not convincing anyone of that by blasting past someone 10 yards away from you. You should have more concerned about getting a TD instead of ripping it... loser.
I wish Parcells was coaching because Parcells would have yanked Romo out of there, let him sit and think about what a crappy job he was doing, and then put him back in later to see if any improvement happened. You can't let Romo keep on a roll of bad passing, because he thinks nothing of it and will continue to throw that way unless you slap him up side the head and make him address his problems.
Without a doubt, Romo will never be one of the Cowboys' great QBs. He'd have to have a few Montana-like seasons to erase that fine display of crappiness last night. I don't think he can do it. I know he can't do it. He's been in long enough to where it is now, what you see is what you get. I see inconsistentcy, and I see that when Romo sucks, he sucks hard. I don't think he really cares enough about his profession, about his teammates, the organization, or anything to make him want to be a better quarterback.
And how about coaching? Where was it. Phillips let Romo stay in the game... sure, for most QB's you need to keep them in else you shatter their confidence. Romo's not like that though, he needs to know that he can't just play like crap and get away with it. Parcells figured that out early on, Phillips should have figured it out by now. Being all buddies is fine off the field, but during a game, it's business. And in business, you need to cut your losses at some point.
But yeah, Romo totally lost the game for the Cowboys. It had to be the worst performance I've seen (or at least as bad as any) of any QB in pro ball. There's no excuse for it. Cowboys need a real QB, a hungry one that wants to win, that wants to be the best QB in the NFL.
Yes, Romo is highly rated, but that's to be expected from any Cowboys QB. He needs to be more than highly rated, he needs to be a good leader, he need to command respect, and needs to stop smiling after performing worse than a rookie QB.
I've been reluctant to "adopt" Romo for a few years now, and last night removed anything that may have led me to think that Romo was a good QB. A good QB needs to be fairly consistent, and Romo doesn't fit that bill. He has sparks, but that isn't good enough. He'll have a few good games, and then falls apart. Romo isn't a rookie anymore, he's been in there long enough to where he should know how to play. I don't care if later on he's the highest rated QB on paper... he still sux.
Look at Eli, not that he played as badly as Romo, but he wasn't doing that great at first, but got his stuff together in the game and ended up doing a good job overall. Romo, on the other hand, was consistently bad the entire game, with the exception of a handful of passes, some that should have been caught.
That's another thing, receivers need to catch the balls. WTF else are they being paid for? Romo made one great pass to Crayton, I believe, who was in double coverage but it was right to him... and it looked like he barely even tried to catch it.
As bad as Dallas played, the only reason they lost was because Romo was practically giving the Giants points. Simply a terrible game. Too bad it was the opener to that new stadium... at least it's memorable.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
U.N. Has It Ass Backwards
U.N. War Crimes Allegation Won't Change Israel's Calculations - Yahoo! News: "The U.N. investigation concluded that Israel's January offensive in Gaza had been 'a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.'"
This is ridiculous. They're saying that the Israelis are the terrorists. This is so stupid that the person heading up that part of the organization needs to be removed. End of story.
This is ridiculous. They're saying that the Israelis are the terrorists. This is so stupid that the person heading up that part of the organization needs to be removed. End of story.
Lab tech arrested in killing of Yale student - USATODAY.com
Lab tech arrested in killing of Yale student - USATODAY.com
Lewis would not give details of the crime or motive, saying that the arrest warrant was sealed. But he did say that there was no romantic relationship between Le, 24, who was doing medical research, and Clark, who cleaned animal cages in the lab.
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Yes, being a bitch to someone who can kill you with their bare hands is probably not a very smart thing to do. Certainly doesn't justify killing her, of course, but you never know what will trigger someone to murder. Being professional and treating people with respect probably won't be a pretext for someone wanting to kill you.
That said, we can only get one version of the story. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong though, maybe he's all shook up and wants to tell the truth. Who knows, makes sense so far though.
"This was not a street crime. It was not a domestic crime," Lewis said at a morning news conference that began moments after Clark was arrested at a Super 8 Motel in Cromwell, Conn.
"We have to really educate ourselves about who we work with and how we deal with each other," he said.
Lewis would not give details of the crime or motive, saying that the arrest warrant was sealed. But he did say that there was no romantic relationship between Le, 24, who was doing medical research, and Clark, who cleaned animal cages in the lab.
---
Yes, being a bitch to someone who can kill you with their bare hands is probably not a very smart thing to do. Certainly doesn't justify killing her, of course, but you never know what will trigger someone to murder. Being professional and treating people with respect probably won't be a pretext for someone wanting to kill you.
That said, we can only get one version of the story. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong though, maybe he's all shook up and wants to tell the truth. Who knows, makes sense so far though.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Deutsche Telekom and Sprint?
Sprint shares jump on Deutsche Telekom report - MarketWatch
I'm all for German stuff, sure, but these guys are looking at making a Sprint/Nextel/Tmobile. Each utilizes their own technology. Sprint/Nextel have been hammering out compatibility issues for a while, add in Tmobile and that's making things even more complicated.
But I never have any problems with my phone now... so I guess it might not be too big of an obstacle to overcome. How the hell did a German company come to get enough money to gobble up Sprint? Oh yeah, the Euro is like a hundred dollars right now. :P Well, not that bad, but bad enough to attract foreign companies to buy American.
I'm all for German stuff, sure, but these guys are looking at making a Sprint/Nextel/Tmobile. Each utilizes their own technology. Sprint/Nextel have been hammering out compatibility issues for a while, add in Tmobile and that's making things even more complicated.
But I never have any problems with my phone now... so I guess it might not be too big of an obstacle to overcome. How the hell did a German company come to get enough money to gobble up Sprint? Oh yeah, the Euro is like a hundred dollars right now. :P Well, not that bad, but bad enough to attract foreign companies to buy American.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
With the Death Penalty, OOPS Isn't Acceptable
Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty : The New Yorker
Pasted the story below, and it's a great one. A very sad one for an innocent man. A sad one also in that executions have become so routine, the human life has become so meaningless today, that a man's plea with convincing evidence and circumstances to throw out his conviction was never even bothered to be read by anyone. They just... filed it probably, as a matter of routine. Routine in putting criminals to death, routine that if they've gone "this far" in the process, it all must be a bunch of bull now. Routine for a certain arson investigator to find arson as the cause of most his investigations. Routine... killed an innocent man.
I admit ignorance. I thought that people actually read and considered everything submitted to them when a person is on death row. But I was wrong.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is so bent on getting people into the death chamber. Under the same bitch that wouldn't consider an appeal because it came in shortly after 5 p.m., this guy never had a chance. That Criminal Appeals Courty chief bitch needs to be brought to justice herself. She's responsible for an innocent man being put to death because they come up with the rules of the game. And the rules did not afford this guy's submission of new evidence that obviously should have been looked at.
Even Gov. Perry is responsible. The guy's last hope for someone in a position to right this incredible wrong, never even bothered looking at the report. Actually, I'm not even sure if people bothered sharing it with the governor, but he's responsible for their actions... and heads need to ROLL! Dammit.
Sure, most people on death row are guilty as hell. But this guy always maintained his innocence. He was probably convicted for having a tattoo and liking heavy metal... but who cares. The guy finally managed to get in contact with people who looked into his case... and a superhero, of sorts, scientist who absolutely and positively showed that every single factor that was used to convict this guy was false. Every one. Well, tattoos and Led Zepplin poster probably not, but all the "real" evidence was totally debunked. But no, nobody who should have considered the evidence did their job.
This is sick. That an innocent person was killed by the state I call home... sickens me no end. That Gov. Perry, whom I thought was a considerate person, may have been to blame, is also disgusting. Texas is a great state, but if we're killing innocent people, then things need to change, big time.
One definite change, is the Court of Criminal Appeals. I don't know if the bitch is still in there, she probably is, but she needs to get her ass out, and at a minimum she needs to be investigated for negligence and ethics violations, if not more. The bitch needs to pay one way or another.
Gov. Perry needs to pay too. There needs to be an investigation on the chain of custody for the documents received when the office received documents related to the prisoner's plea. If there isn't one, that needs to change. If someone didn't send it up, that person needs to find another line of work, at a minimum, negligence and ethic violations as well should be considered depending on the circumstances.
This was simply inexcusable and heads need to ROLL!
---
Pasted the story below, and it's a great one. A very sad one for an innocent man. A sad one also in that executions have become so routine, the human life has become so meaningless today, that a man's plea with convincing evidence and circumstances to throw out his conviction was never even bothered to be read by anyone. They just... filed it probably, as a matter of routine. Routine in putting criminals to death, routine that if they've gone "this far" in the process, it all must be a bunch of bull now. Routine for a certain arson investigator to find arson as the cause of most his investigations. Routine... killed an innocent man.
I admit ignorance. I thought that people actually read and considered everything submitted to them when a person is on death row. But I was wrong.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is so bent on getting people into the death chamber. Under the same bitch that wouldn't consider an appeal because it came in shortly after 5 p.m., this guy never had a chance. That Criminal Appeals Courty chief bitch needs to be brought to justice herself. She's responsible for an innocent man being put to death because they come up with the rules of the game. And the rules did not afford this guy's submission of new evidence that obviously should have been looked at.
Even Gov. Perry is responsible. The guy's last hope for someone in a position to right this incredible wrong, never even bothered looking at the report. Actually, I'm not even sure if people bothered sharing it with the governor, but he's responsible for their actions... and heads need to ROLL! Dammit.
Sure, most people on death row are guilty as hell. But this guy always maintained his innocence. He was probably convicted for having a tattoo and liking heavy metal... but who cares. The guy finally managed to get in contact with people who looked into his case... and a superhero, of sorts, scientist who absolutely and positively showed that every single factor that was used to convict this guy was false. Every one. Well, tattoos and Led Zepplin poster probably not, but all the "real" evidence was totally debunked. But no, nobody who should have considered the evidence did their job.
This is sick. That an innocent person was killed by the state I call home... sickens me no end. That Gov. Perry, whom I thought was a considerate person, may have been to blame, is also disgusting. Texas is a great state, but if we're killing innocent people, then things need to change, big time.
One definite change, is the Court of Criminal Appeals. I don't know if the bitch is still in there, she probably is, but she needs to get her ass out, and at a minimum she needs to be investigated for negligence and ethics violations, if not more. The bitch needs to pay one way or another.
Gov. Perry needs to pay too. There needs to be an investigation on the chain of custody for the documents received when the office received documents related to the prisoner's plea. If there isn't one, that needs to change. If someone didn't send it up, that person needs to find another line of work, at a minimum, negligence and ethic violations as well should be considered depending on the circumstances.
This was simply inexcusable and heads need to ROLL!
---
Trial by Fire
Did Texas execute an innocent man?
by David Grann September 7, 2009
Cameron Todd Willingham in his cell on death row, in 1994. He insisted upon his innocence in the deaths of his children and refused an offer to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. Photograph by Ken Light.
The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.
Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside.
Willingham told the Barbees to call the Fire Department, and while Diane raced down the street to get help he found a stick and broke the children’s bedroom window. Fire lashed through the hole. He broke another window; flames burst through it, too, and he retreated into the yard, kneeling in front of the house. A neighbor later told police that Willingham intermittently cried, “My babies!” then fell silent, as if he had “blocked the fire out of his mind.”
Diane Barbee, returning to the scene, could feel intense heat radiating off the house. Moments later, the five windows of the children’s room exploded and flames “blew out,” as Barbee put it. Within minutes, the first firemen had arrived, and Willingham approached them, shouting that his children were in their bedroom, where the flames were thickest. A fireman sent word over his radio for rescue teams to “step on it.”
More men showed up, uncoiling hoses and aiming water at the blaze. One fireman, who had an air tank strapped to his back and a mask covering his face, slipped through a window but was hit by water from a hose and had to retreat. He then charged through the front door, into a swirl of smoke and fire. Heading down the main corridor, he reached the kitchen, where he saw a refrigerator blocking the back door.
Todd Willingham, looking on, appeared to grow more hysterical, and a police chaplain named George Monaghan led him to the back of a fire truck and tried to calm him down. Willingham explained that his wife, Stacy, had gone out earlier that morning, and that he had been jolted from sleep by Amber screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!”
“My little girl was trying to wake me up and tell me about the fire,” he said, adding, “I couldn’t get my babies out.”
While he was talking, a fireman emerged from the house, cradling Amber. As she was given C.P.R., Willingham, who was twenty-three years old and powerfully built, ran to see her, then suddenly headed toward the babies’ room. Monaghan and another man restrained him. “We had to wrestle with him and then handcuff him, for his and our protection,” Monaghan later told police. “I received a black eye.” One of the first firemen at the scene told investigators that, at an earlier point, he had also held Willingham back. “Based on what I saw on how the fire was burning, it would have been crazy for anyone to try and go into the house,” he said.
Willingham was taken to a hospital, where he was told that Amber—who had actually been found in the master bedroom—had died of smoke inhalation. Kameron and Karmon had been lying on the floor of the children’s bedroom, their bodies severely burned. According to the medical examiner, they, too, died from smoke inhalation.
News of the tragedy, which took place on December 23, 1991, spread through Corsicana. A small city fifty-five miles northeast of Waco, it had once been the center of Texas’s first oil boom, but many of the wells had since dried up, and more than a quarter of the city’s twenty thousand inhabitants had fallen into poverty. Several stores along the main street were shuttered, giving the place the feel of an abandoned outpost.
Willingham and his wife, who was twenty-two years old, had virtually no money. Stacy worked in her brother’s bar, called Some Other Place, and Willingham, an unemployed auto mechanic, had been caring for the kids. The community took up a collection to help the Willinghams pay for funeral arrangements.
Fire investigators, meanwhile, tried to determine the cause of the blaze. (Willingham gave authorities permission to search the house: “I know we might not ever know all the answers, but I’d just like to know why my babies were taken from me.”) Douglas Fogg, who was then the assistant fire chief in Corsicana, conducted the initial inspection. He was tall, with a crew cut, and his voice was raspy from years of inhaling smoke from fires and cigarettes. He had grown up in Corsicana and, after graduating from high school, in 1963, he had joined the Navy, serving as a medic in Vietnam, where he was wounded on four occasions. He was awarded a Purple Heart each time. After he returned from Vietnam, he became a firefighter, and by the time of the Willingham blaze he had been battling fire—or what he calls “the beast”—for more than twenty years, and had become a certified arson investigator. “You learn that fire talks to you,” he told me.
He was soon joined on the case by one of the state’s leading arson sleuths, a deputy fire marshal named Manuel Vasquez, who has since died. Short, with a paunch, Vasquez had investigated more than twelve hundred fires. Arson investigators have always been considered a special breed of detective. In the 1991 movie “Backdraft,” a heroic arson investigator says of fire, “It breathes, it eats, and it hates. The only way to beat it is to think like it. To know that this flame will spread this way across the door and up across the ceiling.” Vasquez, who had previously worked in Army intelligence, had several maxims of his own. One was “Fire does not destroy evidence—it creates it.” Another was “The fire tells the story. I am just the interpreter.” He cultivated a Sherlock Holmes-like aura of invincibility. Once, he was asked under oath whether he had ever been mistaken in a case. “If I have, sir, I don’t know,” he responded. “It’s never been pointed out.”
Vasquez and Fogg visited the Willinghams’ house four days after the blaze. Following protocol, they moved from the least burned areas toward the most damaged ones. “It is a systematic method,” Vasquez later testified, adding, “I’m just collecting information. . . . I have not made any determination. I don’t have any preconceived idea.”
The men slowly toured the perimeter of the house, taking notes and photographs, like archeologists mapping out a ruin. Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”
In the utility room, he noticed on the wall pictures of skulls and what he later described as an image of “the Grim Reaper.” Then he turned into the master bedroom, where Amber’s body had been found. Most of the damage there was also from smoke and heat, suggesting that the fire had started farther down the hallway, and he headed that way, stepping over debris and ducking under insulation and wiring that hung down from the exposed ceiling.
As he and Fogg removed some of the clutter, they noticed deep charring along the base of the walls. Because gases become buoyant when heated, flames ordinarily burn upward. But Vasquez and Fogg observed that the fire had burned extremely low down, and that there were peculiar char patterns on the floor, shaped like puddles.
Vasquez’s mood darkened. He followed the “burn trailer”—the path etched by the fire—which led from the hallway into the children’s bedroom. Sunlight filtering through the broken windows illuminated more of the irregularly shaped char patterns. A flammable or combustible liquid doused on a floor will cause a fire to concentrate in these kinds of pockets, which is why investigators refer to them as “pour patterns” or “puddle configurations.”
The fire had burned through layers of carpeting and tile and plywood flooring. Moreover, the metal springs under the children’s beds had turned white—a sign that intense heat had radiated beneath them. Seeing that the floor had some of the deepest burns, Vasquez deduced that it had been hotter than the ceiling, which, given that heat rises, was, in his words, “not normal.”
Fogg examined a piece of glass from one of the broken windows. It contained a spiderweb-like pattern—what fire investigators call “crazed glass.” Forensic textbooks had long described the effect as a key indicator that a fire had burned “fast and hot,” meaning that it had been fuelled by a liquid accelerant, causing the glass to fracture.
The men looked again at what appeared to be a distinct burn trailer through the house: it went from the children’s bedroom into the corridor, then turned sharply to the right and proceeded out the front door. To the investigators’ surprise, even the wood under the door’s aluminum threshold was charred. On the concrete floor of the porch, just outside the front door, Vasquez and Fogg noticed another unusual thing: brown stains, which, they reported, were consistent with the presence of an accelerant.
The men scanned the walls for soot marks that resembled a “V.” When an object catches on fire, it creates such a pattern, as heat and smoke radiate outward; the bottom of the “V” can therefore point to where a fire began. In the Willingham house, there was a distinct “V” in the main corridor. Examining it and other burn patterns, Vasquez identified three places where fire had originated: in the hallway, in the children’s bedroom, and at the front door. Vasquez later testified that multiple origins pointed to one conclusion: the fire was “intentionally set by human hands.”
By now, both investigators had a clear vision of what had happened. Someone had poured liquid accelerant throughout the children’s room, even under their beds, then poured some more along the adjoining hallway and out the front door, creating a “fire barrier” that prevented anyone from escaping; similarly, a prosecutor later suggested, the refrigerator in the kitchen had been moved to block the back-door exit. The house, in short, had been deliberately transformed into a death trap.
The investigators collected samples of burned materials from the house and sent them to a laboratory that could detect the presence of a liquid accelerant. The lab’s chemist reported that one of the samples contained evidence of “mineral spirits,” a substance that is often found in charcoal-lighter fluid. The sample had been taken by the threshold of the front door.
The fire was now considered a triple homicide, and Todd Willingham—the only person, besides the victims, known to have been in the house at the time of the blaze—became the prime suspect.
Police and fire investigators canvassed the neighborhood, interviewing witnesses. Several, like Father Monaghan, initially portrayed Willingham as devastated by the fire. Yet, over time, an increasing number of witnesses offered damning statements. Diane Barbee said that she had not seen Willingham try to enter the house until after the authorities arrived, as if he were putting on a show. And when the children’s room exploded with flames, she added, he seemed more preoccupied with his car, which he moved down the driveway. Another neighbor reported that when Willingham cried out for his babies he “did not appear to be excited or concerned.” Even Father Monaghan wrote in a statement that, upon further reflection, “things were not as they seemed. I had the feeling that [Willingham] was in complete control.”
The police began to piece together a disturbing profile of Willingham. Born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1968, he had been abandoned by his mother when he was a baby. His father, Gene, who had divorced his mother, eventually raised him with his stepmother, Eugenia. Gene, a former U.S. marine, worked in a salvage yard, and the family lived in a cramped house; at night, they could hear freight trains rattling past on a nearby track. Willingham, who had what the family called the “classic Willingham look”—a handsome face, thick black hair, and dark eyes—struggled in school, and as a teen-ager began to sniff paint. When he was seventeen, Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services evaluated him, and reported, “He likes ‘girls,’ music, fast cars, sharp trucks, swimming, and hunting, in that order.” Willingham dropped out of high school, and over time was arrested for, among other things, driving under the influence, stealing a bicycle, and shoplifting.
In 1988, he met Stacy, a senior in high school, who also came from a troubled background: when she was four years old, her stepfather had strangled her mother to death during a fight. Stacy and Willingham had a turbulent relationship. Willingham, who was unfaithful, drank too much Jack Daniel’s, and sometimes hit Stacy—even when she was pregnant. A neighbor said that he once heard Willingham yell at her, “Get up, bitch, and I’ll hit you again.”
On December 31st, the authorities brought Willingham in for questioning. Fogg and Vasquez were present for the interrogation, along with Jimmie Hensley, a police officer who was working his first arson case. Willingham said that Stacy had left the house around 9 A.M. to pick up a Christmas present for the kids, at the Salvation Army. “After she got out of the driveway, I heard the twins cry, so I got up and gave them a bottle,” he said. The children’s room had a safety gate across the doorway, which Amber could climb over but not the twins, and he and Stacy often let the twins nap on the floor after they drank their bottles. Amber was still in bed, Willingham said, so he went back into his room to sleep. “The next thing I remember is hearing ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ ” he recalled. “The house was already full of smoke.” He said that he got up, felt around the floor for a pair of pants, and put them on. He could no longer hear his daughter’s voice (“I heard that last ‘Daddy, Daddy’ and never heard her again”), and he hollered, “Oh God— Amber, get out of the house! Get out of the house!’ ”
He never sensed that Amber was in his room, he said. Perhaps she had already passed out by the time he stood up, or perhaps she came in after he left, through a second doorway, from the living room. He said that he went down the corridor and tried to reach the children’s bedroom. In the hallway, he said, “you couldn’t see nothing but black.” The air smelled the way it had when their microwave had blown up, three weeks earlier—like “wire and stuff like that.” He could hear sockets and light switches popping, and he crouched down, almost crawling. When he made it to the children’s bedroom, he said, he stood and his hair caught on fire. “Oh God, I never felt anything that hot before,” he said of the heat radiating out of the room.
After he patted out the fire on his hair, he said, he got down on the ground and groped in the dark. “I thought I found one of them once,” he said, “but it was a doll.” He couldn’t bear the heat any longer. “I felt myself passing out,” he said. Finally, he stumbled down the corridor and out the front door, trying to catch his breath. He saw Diane Barbee and yelled for her to call the Fire Department. After she left, he insisted, he tried without success to get back inside.
The investigators asked him if he had any idea how the fire had started. He said that he wasn’t sure, though it must have originated in the children’s room, since that was where he first saw flames; they were glowing like “bright lights.” He and Stacy used three space heaters to keep the house warm, and one of them was in the children’s room. “I taught Amber not to play with it,” he said, adding that she got “whuppings every once in a while for messing with it.” He said that he didn’t know if the heater, which had an internal flame, was turned on. (Vasquez later testified that when he had checked the heater, four days after the fire, it was in the “Off” position.) Willingham speculated that the fire might have been started by something electrical: he had heard all that popping and crackling.
When pressed whether someone might have a motive to hurt his family, he said that he couldn’t think of anyone that “cold-blooded.” He said of his children, “I just don’t understand why anybody would take them, you know? We had three of the most pretty babies anybody could have ever asked for.” He went on, “Me and Stacy’s been together for four years, but off and on we get into a fight and split up for a while and I think those babies is what brought us so close together . . . neither one of us . . . could live without them kids.” Thinking of Amber, he said, “To tell you the honest-to-God’s truth, I wish she hadn’t woke me up.”
During the interrogation, Vasquez let Fogg take the lead. Finally, Vasquez turned to Willingham and asked a seemingly random question: had he put on shoes before he fled the house?
“No, sir,” Willingham replied.
A map of the house was on a table between the men, and Vasquez pointed to it. “You walked out this way?” he said.
Willingham said yes.
Vasquez was now convinced that Willingham had killed his children. If the floor had been soaked with a liquid accelerant and the fire had burned low, as the evidence suggested, Willingham could not have run out of the house the way he had described without badly burning his feet. A medical report indicated that his feet had been unscathed.
Willingham insisted that, when he left the house, the fire was still around the top of the walls and not on the floor. “I didn’t have to jump through any flames,” he said. Vasquez believed that this was impossible, and that Willingham had lit the fire as he was retreating—first, torching the children’s room, then the hallway, and then, from the porch, the front door. Vasquez later said of Willingham, “He told me a story of pure fabrication. . . . He just talked and he talked and all he did was lie.”
Still, there was no clear motive. The children had life-insurance policies, but they amounted to only fifteen thousand dollars, and Stacy’s grandfather, who had paid for them, was listed as the primary beneficiary. Stacy told investigators that even though Willingham hit her he had never abused the children—“Our kids were spoiled rotten,” she said—and she did not believe that Willingham could have killed them.
Ultimately, the authorities concluded that Willingham was a man without a conscience whose serial crimes had climaxed, almost inexorably, in murder. John Jackson, who was then the assistant district attorney in Corsicana, was assigned to prosecute Willingham’s case. He later told the Dallas Morning News that he considered Willingham to be “an utterly sociopathic individual” who deemed his children “an impediment to his lifestyle.” Or, as the local district attorney, Pat Batchelor, put it, “The children were interfering with his beer drinking and dart throwing.”
On the night of January 8, 1992, two weeks after the fire, Willingham was riding in a car with Stacy when SWAT teams surrounded them, forcing them to the side of the road. “They pulled guns out like we had just robbed ten banks,” Stacy later recalled. “All we heard was ‘click, click.’ . . . Then they arrested him.”
Willingham was charged with murder. Because there were multiple victims, he was eligible for the death penalty, under Texas law. Unlike many other prosecutors in the state, Jackson, who had ambitions of becoming a judge, was personally opposed to capital punishment. “I don’t think it’s effective in deterring criminals,” he told me. “I just don’t think it works.” He also considered it wasteful: because of the expense of litigation and the appeals process, it costs, on average, $2.3 million to execute a prisoner in Texas—about three times the cost of incarcerating someone for forty years. Plus, Jackson said, “What’s the recourse if you make a mistake?” Yet his boss, Batchelor, believed that, as he once put it, “certain people who commit bad enough crimes give up the right to live,” and Jackson came to agree that the heinous nature of the crime in the Willingham case—“one of the worst in terms of body count” that he had ever tried—mandated death.
Willingham couldn’t afford to hire lawyers, and was assigned two by the state: David Martin, a former state trooper, and Robert Dunn, a local defense attorney who represented everyone from alleged murderers to spouses in divorce cases—a “Jack-of-all-trades,” as he calls himself. (“In a small town, you can’t say ‘I’m a so-and-so lawyer,’ because you’ll starve to death,” he told me.)
Not long after Willingham’s arrest, authorities received a message from a prison inmate named Johnny Webb, who was in the same jail as Willingham. Webb alleged that Willingham had confessed to him that he took “some kind of lighter fluid, squirting [it] around the walls and the floor, and set a fire.” The case against Willingham was considered airtight.
Even so, several of Stacy’s relatives—who, unlike her, believed that Willingham was guilty—told Jackson that they preferred to avoid the anguish of a trial. And so, shortly before jury selection, Jackson approached Willingham’s attorneys with an extraordinary offer: if their client pleaded guilty, the state would give him a life sentence. “I was really happy when I thought we might have a deal to avoid the death penalty,” Jackson recalls.
Willingham’s lawyers were equally pleased. They had little doubt that he had committed the murders and that, if the case went before a jury, he would be found guilty, and, subsequently, executed. “Everyone thinks defense lawyers must believe their clients are innocent, but that’s seldom true,” Martin told me. “Most of the time, they’re guilty as sin.” He added of Willingham, “All the evidence showed that he was one hundred per cent guilty. He poured accelerant all over the house and put lighter fluid under the kids’ beds.” It was, he said, “a classic arson case”: there were “puddle patterns all over the place—no disputing those.”
Martin and Dunn advised Willingham that he should accept the offer, but he refused. The lawyers asked his father and stepmother to speak to him. According to Eugenia, Martin showed them photographs of the burned children and said, “Look what your son did. You got to talk him into pleading, or he’s going to be executed.”
His parents went to see their son in jail. Though his father did not believe that he should plead guilty if he were innocent, his stepmother beseeched him to take the deal. “I just wanted to keep my boy alive,” she told me.
Willingham was implacable. “I ain’t gonna plead to something I didn’t do, especially killing my own kids,” he said. It was his final decision. Martin says, “I thought it was nuts at the time—and I think it’s nuts now.”
Willingham’s refusal to accept the deal confirmed the view of the prosecution, and even that of his defense lawyers, that he was an unrepentant killer.
In August, 1992, the trial commenced in the old stone courthouse in downtown Corsicana. Jackson and a team of prosecutors summoned a procession of witnesses, including Johnny Webb and the Barbees. The crux of the state’s case, though, remained the scientific evidence gathered by Vasquez and Fogg. On the stand, Vasquez detailed what he called more than “twenty indicators” of arson.
“Do you have an opinion as to who started the fire?” one of the prosecutors asked.
“Yes, sir,” Vasquez said. “Mr. Willingham.”
The prosecutor asked Vasquez what he thought Willingham’s intent was in lighting the fire. “To kill the little girls,” he said.
The defense had tried to find a fire expert to counter Vasquez and Fogg’s testimony, but the one they contacted concurred with the prosecution. Ultimately, the defense presented only one witness to the jury: the Willinghams’ babysitter, who said she could not believe that Willingham could have killed his children. (Dunn told me that Willingham had wanted to testify, but Martin and Dunn thought that he would make a bad witness.) The trial ended after two days.
During his closing arguments, Jackson said that the puddle configurations and pour patterns were Willingham’s inadvertent “confession,” burned into the floor. Showing a Bible that had been salvaged from the fire, Jackson paraphrased the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: “Whomsoever shall harm one of my children, it’s better for a millstone to be hung around his neck and for him to be cast in the sea.”
The jury was out for barely an hour before returning with a unanimous guilty verdict. As Vasquez put it, “The fire does not lie.”
II
When Elizabeth Gilbert approached the prison guard, on a spring day in 1999, and said Cameron Todd Willingham’s name, she was uncertain about what she was doing. A forty-seven-year-old French teacher and playwright from Houston, Gilbert was divorced with two children. She had never visited a prison before. Several weeks earlier, a friend, who worked at an organization that opposed the death penalty, had encouraged her to volunteer as a pen pal for an inmate on death row, and Gilbert had offered her name and address. Not long after, a short letter, written with unsteady penmanship, arrived from Willingham. “If you wish to write back, I would be honored to correspond with you,” he said. He also asked if she might visit him. Perhaps out of a writer’s curiosity, or perhaps because she didn’t feel quite herself (she had just been upset by news that her ex-husband was dying of cancer), she agreed. Now she was standing in front of the decrepit penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas—a place that inmates referred to as “the death pit.”
She filed past a razor-wire fence, a series of floodlights, and a checkpoint, where she was patted down, until she entered a small chamber. Only a few feet in front of her was a man convicted of multiple infanticide. He was wearing a white jumpsuit with “DR”—for death row—printed on the back, in large black letters. He had a tattoo of a serpent and a skull on his left biceps. He stood nearly six feet tall and was muscular, though his legs had atrophied after years of confinement.
A Plexiglas window separated Willingham from her; still, Gilbert, who had short brown hair and a bookish manner, stared at him uneasily. Willingham had once fought another prisoner who called him a “baby killer,” and since he had been incarcerated, seven years earlier, he had committed a series of disciplinary infractions that had periodically landed him in the segregation unit, which was known as “the dungeon.”
Willingham greeted her politely. He seemed grateful that she had come. After his conviction, Stacy had campaigned for his release. She wrote to Ann Richards, then the governor of Texas, saying, “I know him in ways that no one else does when it comes to our children. Therefore, I believe that there is no way he could have possibly committed this crime.” But within a year Stacy had filed for divorce, and Willingham had few visitors except for his parents, who drove from Oklahoma to see him once a month. “I really have no one outside my parents to remind me that I am a human being, not the animal the state professes I am,” he told Gilbert at one point.
He didn’t want to talk about death row. “Hell, I live here,” he later wrote her. “When I have a visit, I want to escape from here.” He asked her questions about her teaching and art. He expressed fear that, as a playwright, she might find him a “one-dimensional character,” and apologized for lacking social graces; he now had trouble separating the mores in prison from those of the outside world.
When Gilbert asked him if he wanted something to eat or drink from the vending machines, he declined. “I hope I did not offend you by not accepting any snacks,” he later wrote her. “I didn’t want you to feel I was there just for something like that.”
She had been warned that prisoners often tried to con visitors. He appeared to realize this, subsequently telling her, “I am just a simple man. Nothing else. And to most other people a convicted killer looking for someone to manipulate.”
Their visit lasted for two hours, and afterward they continued to correspond. She was struck by his letters, which seemed introspective, and were not at all what she had expected. “I am a very honest person with my feelings,” he wrote her. “I will not bullshit you on how I feel or what I think.” He said that he used to be stoic, like his father. But, he added, “losing my three daughters . . . my home, wife and my life, you tend to wake up a little. I have learned to open myself.”
She agreed to visit him again, and when she returned, several weeks later, he was visibly moved. “Here I am this person who nobody on the outside is ever going to know as a human, who has lost so much, but still trying to hold on,” he wrote her afterward. “But you came back! I don’t think you will ever know of what importance that visit was in my existence.”
They kept exchanging letters, and she began asking him about the fire. He insisted that he was innocent and that, if someone had poured accelerant through the house and lit it, then the killer remained free. Gilbert wasn’t naïve—she assumed that he was guilty. She did not mind giving him solace, but she was not there to absolve him.
Still, she had become curious about the case, and one day that fall she drove down to the courthouse in Corsicana to review the trial records. Many people in the community remembered the tragedy, and a clerk expressed bewilderment that anyone would be interested in a man who had burned his children alive.
Gilbert took the files and sat down at a small table. As she examined the eyewitness accounts, she noticed several contradictions. Diane Barbee had reported that, before the authorities arrived at the fire, Willingham never tried to get back into the house—yet she had been absent for some time while calling the Fire Department. Meanwhile, her daughter Buffie had reported witnessing Willingham on the porch breaking a window, in an apparent effort to reach his children. And the firemen and police on the scene had described Willingham frantically trying to get into the house.
The witnesses’ testimony also grew more damning after authorities had concluded, in the beginning of January, 1992, that Willingham was likely guilty of murder. In Diane Barbee’s initial statement to authorities, she had portrayed Willingham as “hysterical,” and described the front of the house exploding. But on January 4th, after arson investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder, Barbee suggested that he could have gone back inside to rescue his children, for at the outset she had seen only “smoke coming from out of the front of the house”—smoke that was not “real thick.”
An even starker shift occurred with Father Monaghan’s testimony. In his first statement, he had depicted Willingham as a devastated father who had to be repeatedly restrained from risking his life. Yet, as investigators were preparing to arrest Willingham, he concluded that Willingham had been too emotional (“He seemed to have the type of distress that a woman who had given birth would have upon seeing her children die”); and he expressed a “gut feeling” that Willingham had “something to do with the setting of the fire.”
Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitness and expert testimony in criminal investigations, told me, “The mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something—once you expect something—it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.”
After Gilbert’s visit to the courthouse, she kept wondering about Willingham’s motive, and she pressed him on the matter. In response, he wrote, of the death of his children, “I do not talk about it much anymore and it is still a very powerfully emotional pain inside my being.” He admitted that he had been a “sorry-ass husband” who had hit Stacy—something he deeply regretted. But he said that he had loved his children and would never have hurt them. Fatherhood, he said, had changed him; he stopped being a hoodlum and “settled down” and “became a man.” Nearly three months before the fire, he and Stacy, who had never married, wed at a small ceremony in his home town of Ardmore. He said that the prosecution had seized upon incidents from his past and from the day of the fire to create a portrait of a “demon,” as Jackson, the prosecutor, referred to him. For instance, Willingham said, he had moved the car during the fire simply because he didn’t want it to explode by the house, further threatening the children.
Gilbert was unsure what to make of his story, and she began to approach people who were involved in the case, asking them questions. “My friends thought I was crazy,” Gilbert recalls. “I’d never done anything like this in my life.”
One morning, when Willingham’s parents came to visit him, Gilbert arranged to see them first, at a coffee shop near the prison. Gene, who was in his seventies, had the Willingham look, though his black hair had gray streaks and his dark eyes were magnified by glasses. Eugenia, who was in her fifties, with silvery hair, was as sweet and talkative as her husband was stern and reserved. The drive from Oklahoma to Texas took six hours, and they had woken at three in the morning; because they could not afford a motel, they would have to return home later that day. “I feel like a real burden to them,” Willingham had written Gilbert.
As Gene and Eugenia sipped coffee, they told Gilbert how grateful they were that someone had finally taken an interest in Todd’s case. Gene said that his son, though he had flaws, was no killer.
The evening before the fire, Eugenia said, she had spoken on the phone with Todd. She and Gene were planning on visiting two days later, on Christmas Eve, and Todd told her that he and Stacy and the kids had just picked up family photographs. “He said, ‘We got your pictures for Christmas,’ ” she recalled. “He put Amber on the phone, and she was tattling on one of the twins. Todd didn’t seem upset. If something was bothering him, I would have known.”
Gene and Eugenia got up to go: they didn’t want to miss any of the four hours that were allotted for the visit with their son. Before they left, Gene said, “You’ll let us know if you find anything, won’t you?”
Over the next few weeks, Gilbert continued to track down sources. Many of them, including the Barbees, remained convinced that Willingham was guilty, but several of his friends and relatives had doubts. So did some people in law enforcement. Willingham’s former probation officer in Oklahoma, Polly Goodin, recently told me that Willingham had never demonstrated bizarre or sociopathic behavior. “He was probably one of my favorite kids,” she said. Even a former judge named Bebe Bridges—who had often stood, as she put it, on the “opposite side” of Willingham in the legal system, and who had sent him to jail for stealing—told me that she could not imagine him killing his children. “He was polite, and he seemed to care,” she said. “His convictions had been for dumb-kid stuff. Even the things stolen weren’t significant.” Several months before the fire, Willingham tracked Goodin down at her office, and proudly showed her photographs of Stacy and the kids. “He wanted Bebe and me to know he’d been doing good,” Goodin recalled.
Eventually, Gilbert returned to Corsicana to interview Stacy, who had agreed to meet at the bed-and-breakfast where Gilbert was staying. Stacy was slightly plump, with pale, round cheeks and feathered dark-blond hair; her bangs were held in place by gel, and her face was heavily made up. According to a tape recording of the conversation, Stacy said that nothing unusual had happened in the days before the fire. She and Willingham had not fought, and were preparing for the holiday. Though Vasquez, the arson expert, had recalled finding the space heater off, Stacy was sure that, at least on the day of the incident—a cool winter morning—it had been on. “I remember turning it down,” she recalled. “I always thought, Gosh, could Amber have put something in there?” Stacy added that, more than once, she had caught Amber “putting things too close to it.”
Willingham had often not treated her well, she recalled, and after his incarceration she had left him for a man who did. But she didn’t think that her former husband should be on death row. “I don’t think he did it,” she said, crying.
Though only the babysitter had appeared as a witness for the defense during the main trial, several family members, including Stacy, testified during the penalty phase, asking the jury to spare Willingham’s life. When Stacy was on the stand, Jackson grilled her about the “significance” of Willingham’s “very large tattoo of a skull, encircled by some kind of a serpent.”
“It’s just a tattoo,” Stacy responded.
“He just likes skulls and snakes. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. He just had—he got a tattoo on him.”
The prosecution cited such evidence in asserting that Willingham fit the profile of a sociopath, and brought forth two medical experts to confirm the theory. Neither had met Willingham. One of them was Tim Gregory, a psychologist with a master’s degree in marriage and family issues, who had previously gone goose hunting with Jackson, and had not published any research in the field of sociopathic behavior. His practice was devoted to family counselling.
At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60—a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house—and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting—it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture—a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel. . . . I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.”
The other medical expert was James P. Grigson, a forensic psychiatrist. He testified so often for the prosecution in capital-punishment cases that he had become known as Dr. Death. (A Texas appellate judge once wrote that when Grigson appeared on the stand the defendant might as well “commence writing out his last will and testament.”) Grigson suggested that Willingham was an “extremely severe sociopath,” and that “no pill” or treatment could help him. Grigson had previously used nearly the same words in helping to secure a death sentence against Randall Dale Adams, who had been convicted of murdering a police officer, in 1977. After Adams, who had no prior criminal record, spent a dozen years on death row—and once came within seventy-two hours of being executed—new evidence emerged that absolved him, and he was released. In 1995, three years after Willingham’s trial, Grigson was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for violating ethics. The association stated that Grigson had repeatedly arrived at a “psychiatric diagnosis without first having examined the individuals in question, and for indicating, while testifying in court as an expert witness, that he could predict with 100-per-cent certainty that the individuals would engage in future violent acts.”
After speaking to Stacy, Gilbert had one more person she wanted to interview: the jailhouse informant Johnny Webb, who was incarcerated in Iowa Park, Texas. She wrote to Webb, who said that she could see him, and they met in the prison visiting room. A man in his late twenties, he had pallid skin and a closely shaved head; his eyes were jumpy, and his entire body seemed to tremble. A reporter who once met him described him to me as “nervous as a cat around rocking chairs.” Webb had begun taking drugs when he was nine years old, and had been convicted of, among other things, car theft, selling marijuana, forgery, and robbery.
As Gilbert chatted with him, she thought that he seemed paranoid. During Willingham’s trial, Webb disclosed that he had been given a diagnosis of “post-traumatic stress disorder” after he was sexually assaulted in prison, in 1988, and that he often suffered from “mental impairment.” Under cross-examination, Webb testified that he had no recollection of a robbery that he had pleaded guilty to only months earlier.
Webb repeated for her what he had said in court: he had passed by Willingham’s cell, and as they spoke through a food slot Willingham broke down and told him that he intentionally set the house on fire. Gilbert was dubious. It was hard to believe that Willingham, who had otherwise insisted on his innocence, had suddenly confessed to an inmate he barely knew. The conversation had purportedly taken place by a speaker system that allowed any of the guards to listen—an unlikely spot for an inmate to reveal a secret. What’s more, Webb alleged that Willingham had told him that Stacy had hurt one of the kids, and that the fire was set to cover up the crime. The autopsies, however, had revealed no bruises or signs of trauma on the children’s bodies.
Jailhouse informants, many of whom are seeking reduced time or special privileges, are notoriously unreliable. According to a 2004 study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions, at Northwestern University Law School, lying police and jailhouse informants are the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the United States. At the time that Webb came forward against Willingham, he was facing charges of robbery and forgery. During Willingham’s trial, another inmate planned to testify that he had overheard Webb saying to another prisoner that he was hoping to “get time cut,” but the testimony was ruled inadmissible, because it was hearsay. Webb, who pleaded guilty to the robbery and forgery charges, received a sentence of fifteen years. Jackson, the prosecutor, told me that he generally considered Webb “an unreliable kind of guy,” but added, “I saw no real motive for him to make a statement like this if it wasn’t true. We didn’t cut him any slack.” In 1997, five years after Willingham’s trial, Jackson urged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Webb parole. “I asked them to cut him loose early,” Jackson told me. The reason, Jackson said, was that Webb had been targeted by the Aryan Brotherhood. The board granted Webb parole, but within months of his release he was caught with cocaine and returned to prison.
In March, 2000, several months after Gilbert’s visit, Webb unexpectedly sent Jackson a Motion to Recant Testimony, declaring, “Mr. Willingham is innocent of all charges.” But Willingham’s lawyer was not informed of this development, and soon afterward Webb, without explanation, recanted his recantation. When I recently asked Webb, who was released from prison two years ago, about the turnabout and why Willingham would have confessed to a virtual stranger, he said that he knew only what “the dude told me.” After I pressed him, he said, “It’s very possible I misunderstood what he said.” Since the trial, Webb has been given an additional diagnosis, bipolar disorder. “Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy,” he said. “My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.” He paused, then said, “The statute of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn’t it?”
Aside from the scientific evidence of arson, the case against Willingham did not stand up to scrutiny. Jackson, the prosecutor, said of Webb’s testimony, “You can take it or leave it.” Even the refrigerator’s placement by the back door of the house turned out to be innocuous; there were two refrigerators in the cramped kitchen, and one of them was by the back door. Jimmie Hensley, the police detective, and Douglas Fogg, the assistant fire chief, both of whom investigated the fire, told me recently that they had never believed that the fridge was part of the arson plot. “It didn’t have nothing to do with the fire,” Fogg said.
After months of investigating the case, Gilbert found that her faith in the prosecution was shaken. As she told me, “What if Todd really was innocent?”
III
In the summer of 1660, an Englishman named William Harrison vanished on a walk, near the village of Charingworth, in Gloucestershire. His bloodstained hat was soon discovered on the side of a local road. Police interrogated Harrison’s servant, John Perry, and eventually Perry gave a statement that his mother and his brother had killed Harrison for money. Perry, his mother, and his brother were hanged.
Two years later, Harrison reappeared. He insisted, fancifully, that he had been abducted by a band of criminals and sold into slavery. Whatever happened, one thing was indisputable: he had not been murdered by the Perrys.
The fear that an innocent person might be executed has long haunted jurors and lawyers and judges. During America’s Colonial period, dozens of crimes were punishable by death, including horse thievery, blasphemy, “man-stealing,” and highway robbery. After independence, the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty was gradually reduced, but doubts persisted over whether legal procedures were sufficient to prevent an innocent person from being executed. In 1868, John Stuart Mill made one of the most eloquent defenses of capital punishment, arguing that executing a murderer did not display a wanton disregard for life but, rather, proof of its value. “We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself,” he said. For Mill, there was one counterargument that carried weight—“that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected.”
The modern legal system, with its lengthy appeals process and clemency boards, was widely assumed to protect the kind of “error of justice” that Mill feared. In 2000, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he said, “I know there are some in the country who don’t care for the death penalty, but . . . we’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt.” His top policy adviser on issues of criminal justice emphasized that there is “super due process to make sure that no innocent defendants are executed.”
In recent years, though, questions have mounted over whether the system is fail-safe. Since 1976, more than a hundred and thirty people on death row have been exonerated. DNA testing, which was developed in the eighties, saved seventeen of them, but the technique can be used only in rare instances. Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, which has used DNA testing to exonerate prisoners, estimates that about eighty per cent of felonies do not involve biological evidence.
In 2000, after thirteen people on death row in Illinois were exonerated, George Ryan, who was then governor of the state, suspended the death penalty. Though he had been a longtime advocate of capital punishment, he declared that he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare—the state’s taking of innocent life.” Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.”
Such a case has become a kind of grisly Holy Grail among opponents of capital punishment. In his 2002 book “The Death Penalty,” Stuart Banner observes, “The prospect of killing an innocent person seemed to be the one thing that could cause people to rethink their support for capital punishment. Some who were not troubled by statistical arguments against the death penalty—claims about deterrence or racial disparities—were deeply troubled that such an extreme injustice might occur in an individual case.” Opponents of the death penalty have pointed to several questionable cases. In 1993, Ruben Cantu was executed in Texas for fatally shooting a man during a robbery. Years later, a second victim, who survived the shooting, told the Houston Chronicle that he had been pressured by police to identify Cantu as the gunman, even though he believed Cantu to be innocent. Sam Millsap, the district attorney in the case, who had once supported capital punishment (“I’m no wild-eyed, pointy-headed liberal”), said that he was disturbed by the thought that he had made a mistake.
In 1995, Larry Griffin was put to death in Missouri, for a drive-by shooting of a drug dealer. The case rested largely on the eyewitness testimony of a career criminal named Robert Fitzgerald, who had been an informant for prosecutors before and was in the witness-protection program. Fitzgerald maintained that he happened to be at the scene because his car had broken down. After Griffin’s execution, a probe sponsored by the N.A.A.C.P.’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund revealed that a man who had been wounded during the incident insisted that Griffin was not the shooter. Moreover, the first police officer at the scene disputed that Fitzgerald had witnessed the crime.
These cases, however, stopped short of offering irrefutable proof that a “legally and factually innocent person” was executed. In 2005, a St. Louis prosecutor, Jennifer Joyce, launched an investigation of the Griffin case, upon being presented with what she called “compelling” evidence of Griffin’s potential innocence. After two years of reviewing the evidence, and interviewing a new eyewitness, Joyce said that she and her team were convinced that the “right person was convicted.”
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in 2006, voted with a majority to uphold the death penalty in a Kansas case. In his opinion, Scalia declared that, in the modern judicial system, there has not been “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”
“My problems are simple,” Willingham wrote Gilbert in September, 1999. “Try to keep them from killing me at all costs. End of story.”
During his first years on death row, Willingham had pleaded with his lawyer, David Martin, to rescue him. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to be here, with people I have no business even being around,” he wrote.
For a while, Willingham shared a cell with Ricky Lee Green, a serial killer, who castrated and fatally stabbed his victims, including a sixteen-year-old boy. (Green was executed in 1997.) Another of Willingham’s cellmates, who had an I.Q. below seventy and the emotional development of an eight-year-old, was raped by an inmate. “You remember me telling you I had a new celly?” Willingham wrote in a letter to his parents. “The little retarded boy. . . . There was this guy here on the wing who is a shit sorry coward (who is the same one I got into it with a little over a month ago). Well, he raped [my cellmate] in the 3 row shower week before last.” Willingham said that he couldn’t believe that someone would “rape a boy who cannot even defend himself. Pretty damn low.”
Because Willingham was known as a “baby killer,” he was a target of attacks. “Prison is a rough place, and with a case like mine they never give you the benefit of a doubt,” he wrote his parents. After he tried to fight one prisoner who threatened him, Willingham told a friend that if he hadn’t stood up for himself several inmates would have “beaten me up or raped or”—his thought trailed off.
Over the years, Willingham’s letters home became increasingly despairing. “This is a hard place, and it makes a person hard inside,” he wrote. “I told myself that was one thing I did not want and that was for this place to make me bitter, but it is hard.” He went on, “They have [executed] at least one person every month I have been here. It is senseless and brutal. . . . You see, we are not living in here, we are only existing.” In 1996, he wrote, “I just been trying to figure out why after having a wife and 3 beautiful children that I loved my life has to end like this. And sometimes it just seems like it is not worth it all. . . . In the 3 1/2 years I been here I have never felt that my life was as worthless and desolate as it is now.” Since the fire, he wrote, he had the sense that his life was slowly being erased. He obsessively looked at photographs of his children and Stacy, which he stored in his cell. “So long ago, so far away,” he wrote in a poem. “Was everything truly there?”
Inmates on death row are housed in a prison within a prison, where there are no attempts at rehabilitation, and no educational or training programs. In 1999, after seven prisoners tried to escape from Huntsville, Willingham and four hundred and fifty-nine other inmates on death row were moved to a more secure facility, in Livingston, Texas. Willingham was held in isolation in a sixty-square-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day. He tried to distract himself by drawing—“amateur stuff,” as he put it—and writing poems. In a poem about his children, he wrote, “There is nothing more beautiful than you on this earth.” When Gilbert once suggested some possible revisions to his poems, he explained that he wrote them simply as expressions, however crude, of his feelings. “So to me to cut them up and try to improve on them just for creative-writing purposes would be to destroy what I was doing to start with,” he said.
Despite his efforts to occupy his thoughts, he wrote in his diary that his mind “deteriorates each passing day.” He stopped working out and gained weight. He questioned his faith: “No God who cared about his creation would abandon the innocent.” He seemed not to care if another inmate attacked him. “A person who is already dead inside does not fear” death, he wrote.
One by one, the people he knew in prison were escorted into the execution chamber. There was Clifton Russell, Jr., who, at the age of eighteen, stabbed and beat a man to death, and who said, in his last statement, “I thank my Father, God in Heaven, for the grace he has granted me—I am ready.” There was Jeffery Dean Motley, who kidnapped and fatally shot a woman, and who declared, in his final words, “I love you, Mom. Goodbye.” And there was John Fearance, who murdered his neighbor, and who turned to God in his last moments and said, “I hope He will forgive me for what I done.”
Willingham had grown close to some of his prison mates, even though he knew that they were guilty of brutal crimes. In March, 2000, Willingham’s friend Ponchai Wilkerson—a twenty-eight-year-old who had shot and killed a clerk during a jewelry heist—was executed. Afterward, Willingham wrote in his diary that he felt “an emptiness that has not been touched since my children were taken from me.” A year later, another friend who was about to be executed—“one of the few real people I have met here not caught up in the bravado of prison”—asked Willingham to make him a final drawing. “Man, I never thought drawing a simple Rose could be so emotionally hard,” Willingham wrote. “The hard part is knowing that this will be the last thing I can do for him.”
Another inmate, Ernest Ray Willis, had a case that was freakishly similar to Willingham’s. In 1987, Willis had been convicted of setting a fire, in West Texas, that killed two women. Willis told investigators that he had been sleeping on a friend’s living-room couch and woke up to a house full of smoke. He said that he tried to rouse one of the women, who was sleeping in another room, but the flames and smoke drove him back, and he ran out the front door before the house exploded with flames. Witnesses maintained that Willis had acted suspiciously; he moved his car out of the yard, and didn’t show “any emotion,” as one volunteer firefighter put it. Authorities also wondered how Willis could have escaped the house without burning his bare feet. Fire investigators found pour patterns, puddle configurations, and other signs of arson. The authorities could discern no motive for the crime, but concluded that Willis, who had no previous record of violence, was a sociopath—a “demon,” as the prosecutor put it. Willis was charged with capital murder and sentenced to death.
Willis had eventually obtained what Willingham called, enviously, a “bad-ass lawyer.” James Blank, a noted patent attorney in New York, was assigned Willis’s case as part of his firm’s pro-bono work. Convinced that Willis was innocent, Blank devoted more than a dozen years to the case, and his firm spent millions, on fire consultants, private investigators, forensic experts, and the like. Willingham, meanwhile, relied on David Martin, his court-appointed lawyer, and one of Martin’s colleagues to handle his appeals. Willingham often told his parents, “You don’t know what it’s like to have lawyers who won’t even believe you’re innocent.” Like many inmates on death row, Willingham eventually filed a claim of inadequate legal representation. (When I recently asked Martin about his representation of Willingham, he said, “There were no grounds for reversal, and the verdict was absolutely the right one.” He said of the case, “Shit, it’s incredible that anyone’s even thinking about it.”)
Willingham tried to study the law himself, reading books such as “Tact in Court, or How Lawyers Win: Containing Sketches of Cases Won by Skill, Wit, Art, Tact, Courage and Eloquence.” Still, he confessed to a friend, “The law is so complicated it is hard for me to understand.” In 1996, he obtained a new court-appointed lawyer, Walter Reaves, who told me that he was appalled by the quality of Willingham’s defense at trial and on appeal. Reaves prepared for him a state writ of habeas corpus, known as a Great Writ. In the byzantine appeals process of death-penalty cases, which frequently takes more than ten years, the writ is the most critical stage: a prisoner can introduce new evidence detailing such things as perjured testimony, unreliable medical experts, and bogus scientific findings. Yet most indigent inmates, like Willingham, who constitute the bulk of those on death row, lack the resources to track down new witnesses or dig up fresh evidence. They must depend on court-appointed lawyers, many of whom are “unqualified, irresponsible, or overburdened,” as a study by the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit organization, put it. In 2000, a Dallas Morning News investigation revealed that roughly a quarter of the inmates condemned to death in Texas were represented by court-appointed attorneys who had, at some point in their careers, been “reprimanded, placed on probation, suspended or banned from practicing law by the State Bar.” Although Reaves was more competent, he had few resources to reinvestigate the case, and his writ introduced no new exculpatory evidence: nothing further about Webb, or the reliability of the eyewitness testimony, or the credibility of the medical experts. It focussed primarily on procedural questions, such as whether the trial court erred in its instructions to the jury.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was known for upholding convictions even when overwhelming exculpatory evidence came to light. In 1997, DNA testing proved that sperm collected from a rape victim did not match Roy Criner, who had been sentenced to ninety-nine years for the crime. Two lower courts recommended that the verdict be overturned, but the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld it, arguing that Criner might have worn a condom or might not have ejaculated. Sharon Keller, who is now the presiding judge on the court, stated in a majority opinion, “The new evidence does not establish innocence.” In 2000, George W. Bush pardoned Criner. (Keller was recently charged with judicial misconduct, for refusing to keep open past five o’clock a clerk’s office in order to allow a last-minute petition from a man who was executed later that night.)
On October 31, 1997, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Willingham’s writ. After Willingham filed another writ of habeas corpus, this time in federal court, he was granted a temporary stay. In a poem, Willingham wrote, “One more chance, one more strike / Another bullet dodged, another date escaped.”
Willingham was entering his final stage of appeals. As his anxieties mounted, he increasingly relied upon Gilbert to investigate his case and for emotional support. “She may never know what a change she brought into my life,” he wrote in his diary. “For the first time in many years she gave me a purpose, something to look forward to.”
As their friendship deepened, he asked her to promise him that she would never disappear without explanation. “I already have that in my life,” he told her.
Together, they pored over clues and testimony. Gilbert says that she would send Reaves leads to follow up, but although he was sympathetic, nothing seemed to come of them. In 2002, a federal district court of appeals denied Willingham’s writ without even a hearing. “Now I start the last leg of my journey,” Willingham wrote to Gilbert. “Got to get things in order.”
He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in December, 2003, he was notified that it had declined to hear his case. He soon received a court order announcing that “the Director of the Department of Criminal Justice at Huntsville, Texas, acting by and through the executioner designated by said Director . . . is hereby DIRECTED and COMMANDED, at some hour after 6:00 p.m. on the 17th day of February, 2004, at the Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, Texas, to carry out this sentence of death by intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause the death of said Cameron Todd Willingham.”
Willingham wrote a letter to his parents. “Are you sitting down?” he asked, before breaking the news. “I love you both so much,” he said.
His only remaining recourse was to appeal to the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, a Republican, for clemency. The process, considered the last gatekeeper to the executioner, has been called by the U.S. Supreme Court “the ‘fail safe’ in our criminal justice system.”
IV
One day in January, 2004, Dr. Gerald Hurst, an acclaimed scientist and fire investigator, received a file describing all the evidence of arson gathered in Willingham’s case. Gilbert had come across Hurst’s name and, along with one of Willingham’s relatives, had contacted him, seeking his help. After their pleas, Hurst had agreed to look at the case pro bono, and Reaves, Willingham’s lawyer, had sent him the relevant documents, in the hope that there were grounds for clemency.
Hurst opened the file in the basement of his house in Austin, which served as a laboratory and an office, and was cluttered with microscopes and diagrams of half-finished experiments. Hurst was nearly six and half feet tall, though his stooped shoulders made him seem considerably shorter, and he had a gaunt face that was partly shrouded by long gray hair. He was wearing his customary outfit: black shoes, black socks, a black T-shirt, and loose-fitting black pants supported by black suspenders. In his mouth was a wad of chewing tobacco.
A child prodigy who was raised by a sharecropper during the Great Depression, Hurst used to prowl junk yards, collecting magnets and copper wires in order to build radios and other contraptions. In the early sixties, he received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cambridge University, where he started to experiment with fluorine and other explosive chemicals, and once detonated his lab. Later, he worked as the chief scientist on secret weapons programs for several American companies, designing rockets and deadly fire bombs—or what he calls “god-awful things.” He helped patent what has been described, with only slight exaggeration, as “the world’s most powerful nonnuclear explosive”: an Astrolite bomb. He experimented with toxins so lethal that a fraction of a drop would rot human flesh, and in his laboratory he often had to wear a pressurized moon suit; despite such precautions, exposure to chemicals likely caused his liver to fail, and in 1994 he required a transplant. Working on what he calls “the dark side of arson,” he retrofitted napalm bombs with Astrolite, and developed ways for covert operatives in Vietnam to create bombs from local materials, such as chicken manure and sugar. He also perfected a method for making an exploding T-shirt by nitrating its fibres.
His conscience eventually began pricking him. “One day, you wonder, What the hell am I doing?” he recalls. He left the defense industry, and went on to invent the Mylar balloon, an improved version of Liquid Paper, and Kinepak, a kind of explosive that reduces the risk of accidental detonation. Because of his extraordinary knowledge of fire and explosives, companies in civil litigation frequently sought his help in determining the cause of a blaze. By the nineties, Hurst had begun devoting significant time to criminal-arson cases, and, as he was exposed to the methods of local and state fire investigators, he was shocked by what he saw.
Many arson investigators, it turned out, had only a high-school education. In most states, in order to be certified, investigators had to take a forty-hour course on fire investigation, and pass a written exam. Often, the bulk of an investigator’s training came on the job, learning from “old-timers” in the field, who passed down a body of wisdom about the telltale signs of arson, even though a study in 1977 warned that there was nothing in “the scientific literature to substantiate their validity.”
In 1992, the National Fire Protection Association, which promotes fire prevention and safety, published its first scientifically based guidelines to arson investigation. Still, many arson investigators believed that what they did was more an art than a science—a blend of experience and intuition. In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method. What arson sleuths did, the brief claimed, was “less scientific.” By 2000, after the courts had rejected such claims, arson investigators increasingly recognized the scientific method, but there remained great variance in the field, with many practitioners still relying on the unverified techniques that had been used for generations. “People investigated fire largely with a flat-earth approach,” Hurst told me. “It looks like arson—therefore, it’s arson.” He went on, “My view is you have to have a scientific basis. Otherwise, it’s no different than witch-hunting.”
In 1998, Hurst investigated the case of a woman from North Carolina named Terri Hinson, who was charged with setting a fire that killed her seventeen-month-old son, and faced the death penalty. Hurst ran a series of experiments re-creating the conditions of the fire, which suggested that it had not been arson, as the investigators had claimed; rather, it had started accidentally, from a faulty electrical wire in the attic. Because of this research, Hinson was freed. John Lentini, a fire expert and the author of a leading scientific textbook on arson, describes Hurst as “brilliant.” A Texas prosecutor once told the Chicago Tribune, of Hurst, “If he says it was an arson fire, then it was. If he says it wasn’t, then it wasn’t.”
Hurst’s patents yielded considerable royalties, and he could afford to work pro bono on an arson case for months, even years. But he received the files on Willingham’s case only a few weeks before Willingham was scheduled to be executed. As Hurst looked through the case records, a statement by Manuel Vasquez, the state deputy fire marshal, jumped out at him. Vasquez had testified that, of the roughly twelve hundred to fifteen hundred fires he had investigated, “most all of them” were arson. This was an oddly high estimate; the Texas State Fire Marshals Office typically found arson in only fifty per cent of its cases.
Hurst was also struck by Vasquez’s claim that the Willingham blaze had “burned fast and hot” because of a liquid accelerant. The notion that a flammable or combustible liquid caused flames to reach higher temperatures had been repeated in court by arson sleuths for decades. Yet the theory was nonsense: experiments have proved that wood and gasoline-fuelled fires burn at essentially the same temperature.
Vasquez and Fogg had cited as proof of arson the fact that the front door’s aluminum threshold had melted. “The only thing that can cause that to react is an accelerant,” Vasquez said. Hurst was incredulous. A natural-wood fire can reach temperatures as high as two thousand degrees Fahrenheit—far hotter than the melting point for aluminum alloys, which ranges from a thousand to twelve hundred degrees. And, like many other investigators, Vasquez and Fogg mistakenly assumed that wood charring beneath the aluminum threshold was evidence that, as Vasquez put it, “a liquid accelerant flowed underneath and burned.” Hurst had conducted myriad experiments showing that such charring was caused simply by the aluminum conducting so much heat. In fact, when liquid accelerant is poured under a threshold a fire will extinguish, because of a lack of oxygen. (Other scientists had reached the same conclusion.) “Liquid accelerants can no more burn under an aluminum threshold than can grease burn in a skillet even with a loose-fitting lid,” Hurst declared in his report on the Willingham case.
Hurst then examined Fogg and Vasquez’s claim that the “brown stains” on Willingham’s front porch were evidence of “liquid accelerant,” which had not had time to soak into the concrete. Hurst had previously performed a test in his garage, in which he poured charcoal-lighter fluid on the concrete floor, and lit it. When the fire went out, there were no brown stains, only smudges of soot. Hurst had run the same experiment many times, with different kinds of liquid accelerants, and the result was always the same. Brown stains were common in fires; they were usually composed of rust or gunk from charred debris that had mixed with water from fire hoses.
Another crucial piece of evidence implicating Willingham was the “crazed glass” that Vasquez had attributed to the rapid heating from a fire fuelled with liquid accelerant. Yet, in November of 1991, a team of fire investigators had inspected fifty houses in the hills of Oakland, California, which had been ravaged by brush fires. In a dozen houses, the investigators discovered crazed glass, even though a liquid accelerant had not been used. Most of these houses were on the outskirts of the blaze, where firefighters had shot streams of water; as the investigators later wrote in a published study, they theorized that the fracturing had been induced by rapid cooling, rather than by sudden heating—thermal shock had caused the glass to contract so quickly that it settled disjointedly. The investigators then tested this hypothesis in a laboratory. When they heated glass, nothing happened. But each time they applied water to the heated glass the intricate patterns appeared. Hurst had seen the same phenomenon when he had blowtorched and cooled glass during his research at Cambridge. In his report, Hurst wrote that Vasquez and Fogg’s notion of crazed glass was no more than an “old wives’ tale.”
Hurst then confronted some of the most devastating arson evidence against Willingham: the burn trailer, the pour patterns and puddle configurations, the V-shape and other burn marks indicating that the fire had multiple points of origin, the burning underneath the children’s beds. There was also the positive test for mineral spirits by the front door, and Willingham’s seemingly implausible story that he had run out of the house without burning his bare feet.
As Hurst read through more of the files, he noticed that Willingham and his neighbors had described the windows in the front of the house suddenly exploding and flames roaring forth. It was then that Hurst thought of the legendary Lime Street Fire, one of the most pivotal in the history of arson investigation.
On the evening of October 15, 1990, a thirty-five-year-old man named Gerald Wayne Lewis was found standing in front of his house on Lime Street, in Jacksonville, Florida, holding his three-year-old son. His two-story wood-frame home was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire had been extinguished, six people were dead, including Lewis’s wife. Lewis said that he had rescued his son but was unable to get to the others, who were upstairs.
When fire investigators examined the scene, they found the classic signs of arson: low burns along the walls and floors, pour patterns and puddle configurations, and a burn trailer running from the living room into the hallway. Lewis claimed that the fire had started accidentally, on a couch in the living room—his son had been playing with matches. But a V-shaped pattern by one of the doors suggested that the fire had originated elsewhere. Some witnesses told authorities that Lewis seemed too calm during the fire and had never tried to get help. According to the Los Angeles Times, Lewis had previously been arrested for abusing his wife, who had taken out a restraining order against him. After a chemist said that he had detected the presence of gasoline on Lewis’s clothing and shoes, a report by the sheriff’s office concluded, “The fire was started as a result of a petroleum product being poured on the front porch, foyer, living room, stairwell and second floor bedroom.” Lewis was arrested and charged with six counts of murder. He faced the death penalty.
Subsequent tests, however, revealed that the laboratory identification of gasoline was wrong. Moreover, a local news television camera had captured Lewis in a clearly agitated state at the scene of the fire, and investigators discovered that at one point he had jumped in front of a moving car, asking the driver to call the Fire Department.
Seeking to bolster their theory of the crime, prosecutors turned to John Lentini, the fire expert, and John DeHaan, another leading investigator and textbook author. Despite some of the weaknesses of the case, Lentini told me that, given the classic burn patterns and puddle configurations in the house, he was sure that Lewis had set the fire: “I was prepared to testify and send this guy to Old Sparky”—the electric chair.
To discover the truth, the investigators, with the backing of the prosecution, decided to conduct an elaborate experiment and re-create the fire scene. Local officials gave the investigators permission to use a condemned house next to Lewis’s home, which was about to be torn down. The two houses were virtually identical, and the investigators refurbished the condemned one with the same kind of carpeting, curtains, and furniture that had been in Lewis’s home. The scientists also wired the building with heat and gas sensors that could withstand fire. The cost of the experiment came to twenty thousand dollars. Without using liquid accelerant, Lentini and DeHaan set the couch in the living room on fire, expecting that the experiment would demonstrate that Lewis’s version of events was implausible.
The investigators watched as the fire quickly consumed the couch, sending upward a plume of smoke that hit the ceiling and spread outward, creating a thick layer of hot gases overhead—an efficient radiator of heat. Within three minutes, this cloud, absorbing more gases from the fire below, was banking down the walls and filling the living room. As the cloud approached the floor, its temperature rose, in some areas, to more than eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Suddenly, the entire room exploded in flames, as the radiant heat ignited every piece of furniture, every curtain, every possible fuel source, even the carpeting. The windows shattered.
The fire had reached what is called “flashover”—the point at which radiant heat causes a fire in a room to become a room on fire. Arson investigators knew about the concept of flashover, but it was widely believed to take much longer to occur, especially without a liquid accelerant. From a single fuel source—a couch—the room had reached flashover in four and a half minutes.
Because all the furniture in the living room had ignited, the blaze went from a fuel-controlled fire to a ventilation-controlled fire—or what scientists call “post-flashover.” During post-flashover, the path of the fire depends on new sources of oxygen, from an open door or window. One of the fire investigators, who had been standing by an open door in the living room, escaped moments before the oxygen-starved fire roared out of the room into the hallway—a fireball that caused the corridor to go quickly into flashover as well, propelling the fire out the front door and onto the porch.
After the fire was extinguished, the investigators inspected the hallway and living room. On the floor were irregularly shaped burn patterns that perfectly resembled pour patterns and puddle configurations. It turned out that these classic signs of arson can also appear on their own, after flashover. With the naked eye, it is impossible to distinguish between the pour patterns and puddle configurations caused by an accelerant and those caused naturally by post-flashover. The only reliable way to tell the difference is to take samples from the burn patterns and test them in a laboratory for the presence of flammable or combustible liquids.
During the Lime Street experiment, other things happened that were supposed to occur only in a fire fuelled by liquid accelerant: charring along the base of the walls and doorways, and burning under furniture. There was also a V-shaped pattern by the living-room doorway, far from where the fire had started on the couch. In a small fire, a V-shaped burn mark may pinpoint where a fire began, but during post-flashover these patterns can occur repeatedly, when various objects ignite.
One of the investigators muttered that they had just helped prove the defense’s case. Given the reasonable doubt raised by the experiment, the charges against Lewis were soon dropped. The Lime Street experiment had demolished prevailing notions about fire behavior. Subsequent tests by scientists showed that, during post-flashover, burning under beds and furniture was common, entire doors were consumed, and aluminum thresholds melted.
John Lentini says of the Lime Street Fire, “This was my epiphany. I almost sent a man to die based on theories that were a load of crap.”
Hurst next examined a floor plan of Willingham’s house that Vasquez had drawn, which delineated all the purported pour patterns and puddle configurations. Because the windows had blown out of the children’s room, Hurst knew that the fire had reached flashover. With his finger, Hurst traced along Vasquez’s diagram the burn trailer that had gone from the children’s room, turned right in the hallway, and headed out the front door. John Jackson, the prosecutor, had told me that the path was so “bizarre” that it had to have been caused by a liquid accelerant. But Hurst concluded that it was a natural product of the dynamics of fire during post-flashover. Willingham had fled out the front door, and the fire simply followed the ventilation path, toward the opening. Similarly, when Willingham had broken the windows in the children’s room, flames had shot outward.
Hurst recalled that Vasquez and Fogg had considered it impossible for Willingham to have run down the burning hallway without scorching his bare feet. But if the pour patterns and puddle configurations were a result of a flashover, Hurst reasoned, then they were consonant with Willingham’s explanation of events. When Willingham exited his bedroom, the hallway was not yet on fire; the flames were contained within the children’s bedroom, where, along the ceiling, he saw the “bright lights.” Just as the investigator safely stood by the door in the Lime Street experiment seconds before flashover, Willingham could have stood close to the children’s room without being harmed. (Prior to the Lime Street case, fire investigators had generally assumed that carbon monoxide diffuses quickly through a house during a fire. In fact, up until flashover, levels of carbon monoxide can be remarkably low beneath and outside the thermal cloud.) By the time the Corsicana fire achieved flashover, Willingham had already fled outside and was in the front yard.
Vasquez had made a videotape of the fire scene, and Hurst looked at the footage of the burn trailer. Even after repeated viewings, he could not detect three points of origin, as Vasquez had. (Fogg recently told me that he also saw a continuous trailer and disagreed with Vasquez, but added that nobody from the prosecution or the defense ever asked him on the stand about his opinion on the subject.)
After Hurst had reviewed Fogg and Vasquez’s list of more than twenty arson indicators, he believed that only one had any potential validity: the positive test for mineral spirits by the threshold of the front door. But why had the fire investigators obtained a positive reading only in that location? According to Fogg and Vasquez’s theory of the crime, Willingham had poured accelerant throughout the children’s bedroom and down the hallway. Officials had tested extensively in these areas—including where all the pour patterns and puddle configurations were—and turned up nothing. Jackson told me that he “never did understand why they weren’t able to recover” positive tests in these parts.
Hurst found it hard to imagine Willingham pouring accelerant on the front porch, where neighbors could have seen him. Scanning the files for clues, Hurst noticed a photograph of the porch taken before the fire, which had been entered into evidence. Sitting on the tiny porch was a charcoal grill. The porch was where the family barbecued. Court testimony from witnesses confirmed that there had been a grill, along with a container of lighter fluid, and that both had burned when the fire roared onto the porch during post-flashover. By the time Vasquez inspected the house, the grill had been removed from the porch, during cleanup. Though he cited the container of lighter fluid in his report, he made no mention of the grill. At the trial, he insisted that he had never been told of the grill’s earlier placement. Other authorities were aware of the grill but did not see its relevance. Hurst, however, was convinced that he had solved the mystery: when firefighters had blasted the porch with water, they had likely spread charcoal-lighter fluid from the melted container.
Without having visited the fire scene, Hurst says, it was impossible to pinpoint the cause of the blaze. But, based on the evidence, he had little doubt that it was an accidental fire—one caused most likely by the space heater or faulty electrical wiring. It explained why there had never been a motive for the crime. Hurst concluded that there was no evidence of arson, and that a man who had already lost his three children and spent twelve years in jail was about to be executed based on “junk science.” Hurst wrote his report in such a rush that he didn’t pause to fix the typos.
V
“I am a realist and I will not live a fantasy,” Willingham once told Gilbert about the prospect of proving his innocence. But in February, 2004, he began to have hope. Hurst’s findings had helped to exonerate more than ten people. Hurst even reviewed the scientific evidence against Willingham’s friend Ernest Willis, who had been on death row for the strikingly similar arson charge. Hurst says, “It was like I was looking at the same case. Just change the names.” In his report on the Willis case, Hurst concluded that not “a single item of physical evidence . . . supports a finding of arson.” A second fire expert hired by Ori White, the new district attorney in Willis’s district, concurred. After seventeen years on death row, Willis was set free. “I don’t turn killers loose,” White said at the time. “If Willis was guilty, I’d be retrying him right now. And I’d use Hurst as my witness. He’s a brilliant scientist.” White noted how close the system had come to murdering an innocent man. “He did not get executed, and I thank God for that,” he said.
On February 13th, four days before Willingham was scheduled to be executed, he got a call from Reaves, his attorney. Reaves told him that the fifteen members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which reviews an application for clemency and had been sent Hurst’s report, had made their decision.
“What is it?” Willingham asked.
“I’m sorry,” Reaves said. “They denied your petition.”
The vote was unanimous. Reaves could not offer an explanation: the board deliberates in secret, and its members are not bound by any specific criteria. The board members did not even have to review Willingham’s materials, and usually don’t debate a case in person; rather, they cast their votes by fax—a process that has become known as “death by fax.” Between 1976 and 2004, when Willingham filed his petition, the State of Texas had approved only one application for clemency from a prisoner on death row. A Texas appellate judge has called the clemency system “a legal fiction.” Reaves said of the board members, “They never asked me to attend a hearing or answer any questions.”
The Innocence Project obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, all the records from the governor’s office and the board pertaining to Hurst’s report. “The documents show that they received the report, but neither office has any record of anyone acknowledging it, taking note of its significance, responding to it, or calling any attention to it within the government,” Barry Scheck said. “The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”
LaFayette Collins, who was a member of the board at the time, told me of the process, “You don’t vote guilt or innocence. You don’t retry the trial. You just make sure everything is in order and there are no glaring errors.” He noted that although the rules allowed for a hearing to consider important new evidence, “in my time there had never been one called.” When I asked him why Hurst’s report didn’t constitute evidence of “glaring errors,” he said, “We get all kinds of reports, but we don’t have the mechanisms to vet them.” Alvin Shaw, another board member at the time, said that the case didn’t “ring a bell,” adding, angrily, “Why would I want to talk about it?” Hurst calls the board’s actions “unconscionable.”
Though Reaves told Willingham that there was still a chance that Governor Perry might grant a thirty-day stay, Willingham began to prepare his last will and testament. He had earlier written Stacy a letter apologizing for not being a better husband and thanking her for everything she had given him, especially their three daughters. “I still know Amber’s voice, her smile, her cool Dude saying and how she said: I wanna hold you! Still feel the touch of Karmon and Kameron’s hands on my face.” He said that he hoped that “some day, somehow the truth will be known and my name cleared.”
He asked Stacy if his tombstone could be erected next to their children’s graves. Stacy, who had for so long expressed belief in Willingham’s innocence, had recently taken her first look at the original court records and arson findings. Unaware of Hurst’s report, she had determined that Willingham was guilty. She denied him his wish, later telling a reporter, “He took my kids away from me.”
Gilbert felt as if she had failed Willingham. Even before his pleas for clemency were denied, she told him that all she could give him was her friendship. He told her that it was enough “to be a part of your life in some small way so that in my passing I can know I was at last able to have felt the heart of another who might remember me when I’m gone.” He added, “There is nothing to forgive you for.” He told her that he would need her to be present at his execution, to help him cope with “my fears, thoughts, and feelings.”
On February 17th, the day he was set to die, Willingham’s parents and several relatives gathered in the prison visiting room. Plexiglas still separated Willingham from them. “I wish I could touch and hold both of you,” Willingham had written to them earlier. “I always hugged Mom but I never hugged Pop much.”
As Willingham looked at the group, he kept asking where Gilbert was. Gilbert had recently been driving home from a store when another car ran a red light and smashed into her. Willingham used to tell her to stay in her kitchen for a day, without leaving, to comprehend what it was like to be confined in prison, but she had always found an excuse not to do it. Now she was paralyzed from the neck down.
While she was in an intensive-care unit, she had tried to get a message to Willingham, but apparently failed. Gilbert’s daughter later read her a letter that Willingham had sent her, telling her how much he had grown to love her. He had written a poem: “Do you want to see beauty—like you have never seen? / Then close your eyes, and open your mind, and come along with me.”
Gilbert, who spent years in physical rehabilitation, gradually regaining motion in her arms and upper body, says, “All that time, I thought I was saving Willingham, and I realized then that he was saving me, giving me the strength to get through this. I know I will one day walk again, and I know it is because Willingham showed me the kind of courage it takes to survive.”
Willingham had requested a final meal, and at 4 P.M. on the seventeenth he was served it: three barbecued pork ribs, two orders of onion rings, fried okra, three beef enchiladas with cheese, and two slices of lemon cream pie. He received word that Governor Perry had refused to grant him a stay. (A spokesperson for Perry says, “The Governor made his decision based on the facts of the case.”) Willingham’s mother and father began to cry. “Don’t be sad, Momma,” Willingham said. “In fifty-five minutes, I’m a free man. I’m going home to see my kids.” Earlier, he had confessed to his parents that there was one thing about the day of the fire he had lied about. He said that he had never actually crawled into the children’s room. “I just didn’t want people to think I was a coward,” he said. Hurst told me, “People who have never been in a fire don’t understand why those who survive often can’t rescue the victims. They have no concept of what a fire is like.”
The warden told Willingham that it was time. Willingham, refusing to assist the process, lay down; he was carried into a chamber eight feet wide and ten feet long. The walls were painted green, and in the center of the room, where an electric chair used to be, was a sheeted gurney. Several guards strapped Willingham down with leather belts, snapping buckles across his arms and legs and chest. A medical team then inserted intravenous tubes into his arms. Each official had a separate role in the process, so that no one person felt responsible for taking a life.
Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body. Then came a second drug, pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe. Finally, a third drug, potassium chloride, filled his veins, until his heart stopped, at 6:20 P.M. On his death certificate, the cause was listed as “Homicide.”
After his death, his parents were allowed to touch his face for the first time in more than a decade. Later, at Willingham’s request, they cremated his body and secretly spread some of his ashes over his children’s graves. He had told his parents, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.”
In December, 2004, questions about the scientific evidence in the Willingham case began to surface. Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, of the Chicago Tribune, had published an investigative series on flaws in forensic science; upon learning of Hurst’s report, Possley and Mills asked three fire experts, including John Lentini, to examine the original investigation. The experts concurred with Hurst’s report. Nearly two years later, the Innocence Project commissioned Lentini and three other top fire investigators to conduct an independent review of the arson evidence in the Willingham case. The panel concluded that “each and every one” of the indicators of arson had been “scientifically proven to be invalid.”
In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”
Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He 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 twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.”
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