Summary Of The Todd Willingham Case

Willingham's questionable past hindered his defense and even played a part in his attorneys' ability to defend him. Todd's attorney himself was unsympathetic, and later even admitted he didn't believe in his story. Years later just before he was to be executed pen pal Elizabeth Gilbert, recognized he may not have received a fair trial she found some holes in the state's case. The original reports determined the fire as an arson based on the burn patterns in the house. However by this time improvements within forensic analysis proved there was no evidence of arson, and those burn lines were products of flashover.

Athletic Director Bob Marcus has quite the challenge in allocating the athletic department funds appropriately throughout all the programs within Oakbend Senior High School. After critically analyzing the case study it was quite clear some sports such as football and girls basketball received much more funding compared to other sports such as cross country and track and field. Throughout this case brief an effective solution that is both fair and in line with the districts mission will be expanded on to assist Bob Marcus is making the necessary budget cuts to provide a successful athletic program in the future. Marcus needs to cut about $80,000 from the previous budget plan to accommodate the funding cuts made by the school.

However, "the acceptance of the testimony of his fellow inmate was controversial because this was a confession that was not really proven to be true (Williams, 2012). The inmate may have made up the story & lied in court I order to reduce his sentence. Johnny E. Webb was a drug addict and was on psychiatric medications. Never-less the inmate testimony was taken serious and Willingham was given the death penalty. “Evidence discovered years after the Willingham execution showed that the prosecution had given Webb favorable treatment, then deliberately elicited perjured testimony from

Kirk Bloodsworth was a former Marine, he was also the first person sentenced to death and then subsequent exonerated. Kirk was only 22 years old when he was wrongful convicted and severed nine years in prison before they released him. The reasoning for this was because in 1984 a young girl was found dead in a wooded area and she had been sexual assaulted, strangled, and beaten with a rock. The reason for why he was arrest was because he fit the description of the man that witness where identifying.

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.”

The first case that I researched was a case from Chester, South Carolina which was the Christopher Frank Pittman case. On November 28, 2001, when he was only 12 years old Christopher F. Pittman murder his grandparents, Joe and Joy Pittman while they were asleep in the bed as well as set their house on fire, stole the family truck and fled (muderpedia.org. n.d.). His reason for killing them was because the day before he killed them, his grandfather paddled him after a school bus fight the day before (heraldonline.com. n.d.). At the time of this murder as well as his trial he was South Carolina’s youngest killer. There were a number of people who felt that he should not have been tried as an adult because he was only 12 years old at the time

I think that emotion and false testimony was a big part of this guilty verdict. Having mostly white jurors did not help too. I think that the jury mostly looked at his background and what the prosecution was feeding to them and the emotional effect it had on the victim’s mother. A trial should not be consisting of having to hear that the mother wants justice and that she thinks it is really Darrell hunt to the fact that another black man said he saw Darryl Hunt committing the crime and then try to say that he did not know who Darryl Hunt was. It was shocking to hear that evidence was just someone saying I saw this person committing the crime instead of having actual proof and DNA to back all of that up.

Introduction: The Jamie Reynolds Case gained public interest in 2013 with the murder of a 17 year-old girl Georgia Williams. However, previous to this in 2008 police had issued him with a final warning when he assaulted a 16 year-old girl - Alison. Parents of Georgia Williams refer to the 2008 investigation on Jamie Reynolds as ‘inadequate to say the least’ (2015). The Case involved Legal Accountability and Professional Accountability of three main multi-disciplinary organisations – the Police, Children’s Services and New College.

The Christopher Vaughn case is a popular case in which ballistics and blood spatter aided in solving. Vaughn pleaded not guilty in court, and the defense stuck to the case that it was a murder-suicide case involving his wife. Paul Kish, a blood spatter expert assigned to the case, said that the evidence found at the crime scene did not correlate with Vaughn’s story. Vaughn’s blood was found in many different places; the center console, on his wife’s shorts, on the front and back of her seatbelt, and on the carpet between her shoes. Vaughn’s original statement did not mention the blood present on the seatbelt.

MILLERSBURG — In March 1996, he was 30 years old and had only months before been appointed Holmes County Prosecutor. The murder of Gayle Meggyesy was the third sensational case in which he had encountered in his career. And, now, nearly 30 years later, the case still sticks with Thom White, who has since assumed and descended the bench and moved into private practice. Meggyesy was shot dead in the kitchen of her rural Killbuck Township home on March 29, 1986.

Throughout the actual trial, the image of Michael as an evil thug was dramatized by Prosecutor Burgess. There was one piece of physical evidence against Michael, and one single person (who happened to be a high profile drug dealer in The Bluff) who claimed that Little B did it. The whole trial was manipulated to work against Michael, even the judge seemed to be extremely biased. In general, American opinion has shifted towards more punitive laws, especially towards juveniles. Unfortunately, the children affected will suffer the consequences of their actions for the rest of their life, with little opportunity to ever become successful.

I agree with the decision of him being sentenced for life. He killed two innocent people and was making an attempt on a third person. I think a rightful punishment is life in

However, the main contributing cause to his wrongful conviction was eyewitness misidentification. According to Walker (2015), eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions with “72% of cases being wrongfully convicted based on eye witness testimony.” Another thing I noticed while looking at The Innocence Project, which was also discussed in the book, was racial bias. In the book, they mentioned “wrongful convictions involve a strong racial disparity, with 62 percent of the Innocent Projects 302 cases involving African Americans.”

Framing Truths How do we know what is true? How do we know if a man sentenced to death was truly a murderer? A question echoed by thousands of people revolting against the death penalty as the story of Todd Willingham made it to the headlines. In The New Yorker, under the title of Trial by Fire, came the terrifying enigma: “Did Texas execute an innocent man?” followed by a thorough listing of the evidence that was used to convict Willingham of setting his house on fire and resulting in the death of his three children, and how they were later disproved. There is a great misconception about the source of controversy in issues like these.

12 Angry Men Interview Interview script: Juror No. 8 [The interviewer stands and greets Juror No. 8. He takes off his coat and sits down.] Interviewer: [smiling gently] Hello No. 8, how are you?