Daily Texan: Anti-death penalty event educates student advocates

By William James, Daily Texan Staff
Published: Monday, March 21, 2011

Mary Kang | Daily Texan Staff

Shujaa Graham (center) marches as part of the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break on Sixth Street on Wednesday afternoon. Graham was wrongly accused and was on death row for three years because of police brutality.

Students around the country gathered in Austin to advocate an anti-death penalty agenda as part of the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break.

The weeklong event offered 30 students a crash course in capital punishment education and the opportunity to lobby to end the Texas death penalty system.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Texas has executed 466 people since 1982, more than any other state. Virginia has the second-highest number of executions, with 108 since 1976. Because of this record number of executions, the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break held a rally at the Capitol in hopes of building on the momentum seen recently by other states.

Earlier this month, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn repealed the state’s death penalty law, which made Illinois the 15th state to abolish the law.

Participants involved in the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break had a full itinerary, which began on March 14 with talks by UT assistant sociology instructor Danielle Dirks and exonerated death-row inmate Stanley Howard. The lecturers educated students on how to become a voice for change.

“The death penalty is a very serious topic. Getting together with other informed, interested people is an opportunity to get in on the exciting, social parts of activism,” said women’s and gender studies senior Teri Adams, a member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty Austin.

Students also attended a screening at the South By Southwest Film Conference and Festival of the documentary “Incendiary,” which examines the controversial arson case of Cameron Todd Willingham, directed by Steve Mims, a UT Department of Radio-Television-Film lecturer and UT law student Joe Bailey Jr.
 
The documentary investigates the case of Willingham, who was convicted of murder and executed for the deaths by arson of his three young children at their home in Corsicana but maintained his innocence until his death.

“We took a scientific approach to this case rather [than] emotional, and hopefully, this film is useful to everybody who watches it,” Mims said.

Arson expert Gerald Hurst sent a report that supported Willingham’s innocence to Gov. Rick Perry, but Perry allowed the execution to continue as planned.

“Willingham was a monster. He was a guy who murdered his three children, who tried to beat his wife into an abortion so that he wouldn’t have those kids. Person after person has stood up and testified to facts of this case that quite frankly, you all aren’t covering,” Perry said to The Associated Press.

The Daily Texan: This spring break, fight the death penalty

"This spring break, fight the death penalty," is the title of Rachel Fuerst's guest op-ed in Monday's Daily Texan about the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break. Rachel is a graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and an intern with Witness to Innocence.

Students Against the Death Penalty will host the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break on the UT campus from March 14-18. The program is designed to give students an opportunity to participate in something meaningful during their week off.
The alternative spring break — which is co-sponsored by Texas Moratorium Network, Witness to Innocence, UT Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Amnesty International and numerous other organizations — is a unique opportunity for people interested in human rights and the death penalty to spend their spring break learning from and working with experts on the death penalty as well as with six exonerees who each spent years on death row for crimes they did not commit.
The specific purpose of this alternative spring break is to bring students to Austin for five days of anti-death-penalty activism and education in a social environment. You will learn how to put your knowledge and passion into play and use your influence to push the public discourse to challenge injustice.
Students will gain valuable training and experience in grassroots organizing, lobbying, managing a rally at the Texas Capitol and conducting media relations. During the week, students will be able to immediately put what they learn into action during activities such as a “Day of Innocence” on the statewide Lobby Day Against the Death Penalty on Wednesday, March 16 at the Capitol. Participants will come away with firsthand knowledge of the anti-death-penalty movement and a new understanding of how they can affect public policy.
Now is an important time in the effort to end the death penalty. After an 11-year moratorium, Illinois may soon abolish the death penalty if its governor signs an abolition bill proposed by Illinois legislators. Students who attend the alternative spring break will train to join both the national effort against the death penalty and to help stop executions in Texas — the leading execution state in the country. Since 1982, Texas has executed 466 men and women, and currently, 314 people await their executions in Texas prisons.
Activists, attorneys, victims’ families and individuals exonerated from death row will all join together at the spring break event to fight to end the death penalty. You can be a part of this movement.
If you attend the alternative spring break, you will have the opportunity to speak with Anthony Graves, who was exonerated in October 2010 after spending 18 years on death row as an innocent man. Sam Millsap, who served as an elected district attorney in Bexar County, will also speak. Millsap opposes the death penalty because he believes he might have prosecuted an innocent man, Ruben Cantu, who was executed in 1993.
You will also have the opportunity to speak with Judge Charlie Baird, a former judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In 2010, Judge Baird heard testimony in a case brought up by Cameron Todd Willingham’s family, who were seeking a ruling on whether the Texas justice system wrongfully executed Willingham. A higher court stopped the hearing, preventing Judge Baird from issuing a decision. Interacting with these individuals will provide you with the knowledge necessary to effectively lobby politicians who have the power to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas.
This spring break, join fellow students from around the nation in fighting the death penalty. This is not a symbolic fight for your beliefs. It is a fight for each and every life on death row. It is time to break the machinery of death in Texas. It is time for students around the nation to take part in the fight to save individual men and women from the execution chamber.
Register online at http://springbreakalternative.org/deathpenalty.
Fuerst is a student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

The Daily Texan on Judge Fine: Bad Judgement

The following is Bobby Cervantes's piece for the Daily Texan Editorial Board.

When Judge Kevin Fine, a state judge in Houston, ruled last week that the death penalty in Texas was unconstitutional, the blowback from the state’s conservative brass was swift.

Statements from Gov. Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbot and a slew of other high-profile pro-capital punishment activists decried the judge’s ruling as “an act of unabashed judicial activism,” promising that the ruling would fail an appeal in a higher court.

In his opinion, Fine cited the vaunted Innocence Project, a nationwide effort out of Yeshiva University in New York that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted. While the project has freed some 251 people so far, perhaps its most important role — especially in Texas — is to bring to light the careless and illegal missteps that have led to years-long miscarriages of justice.

“Based on the moratorium [on the death penalty] in Illinois, the Innocence Project and more than 200 people being exonerated nationwide, it can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed,” Fine wrote. “It’s safe to assume we execute innocent people.”

For a judge who showed such clarity and backbone last week, we do not recognize the Judge Fine who yesterday rescinded his previous ruling. He now says that he wants more information on whether or not Texas is executing innocent people, which would make, in his eyes, the death penalty unconstitutional.

While we must make it clear that no concrete evidence has surfaced to definitely accuse the state of executing an innocent person, Judge Fine needs to look no further than the work of the UT Law students whose work last year exonerated two Dallas men, both convicted of capital murder.

The Actual Innocence Clinic at the UT School of Law, in conjunction with the UT Arlington and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, proved its case without DNA evidence, making the exoneration that much more extraordinary.

Even the Cameron Todd Willingham case, which galvanized the entire nation last year, proves the obvious point that Texas’ criminal justice system is, at times, careless. The state convicted Willingham for the murder of his three children (he was accused of burning his East Texas home with his three children inside) and then executed him in 2004.

That kind of carelessness all too often breeds distrust — leading to the numerous questions that continue to surround the Willingham case to this day. Current evidence indicates that Willingham should have been exonerated.

We are reminded today of the life and work of Judge William Wayne Justice, who ruled time and again in the 1970s and ‘80s in favor of integrating East Texas schools, educating the children of illegal immigrants and bringing humanity to the state’s prison system.

They were controversial issues at the time, and they garnered Wayne a considerable amount of hate mail. But as liberal columnist Molly Ivins said of Wayne, “He brought the United States Constitution to Texas.”

That business remains unfinished. We hope Judge Fine is ready to get back to work.

March to Abolish the Death Penalty in the News

"Protesters voice concerns about death penalty," is Bobby Longoria's article in today's The Daily Texan.

Hundreds of signs adorned with crossed out nooses and photos of executed men were held by protestors on the steps of the state Capitol on Saturday as they called for the exoneration of executed Texas man Cameron Todd Willingham.

Anti-death penalty activists have gathered in Austin every October since 2000 to show support for the abolition of the death penalty. This year’s March to Abolish the Death Penalty marks the event’s return to Austin after two years in Houston.

The march was sponsored by more than 50 organizations and included appearances by three exonerated men and the families of current death row inmates.

“I’ve lost all my friends, I lost my family and I am angry,” said Curtis McCarthy, who spent 19 years on death row in Oklahoma before being exonerated in May 2007 by DNA evidence. “I know how the family of Willingham feels. I don’t know what to do about it ... I am here. I don’t know what else to do.”

Willingham was a resident of Corsicana who was convicted of capital murder of his three daughters who were killed in a fire at their home Dec. 23, 1991. Willingham was accused of setting the fire and spent more than 10 years in the trial process claiming he was innocent.

After unsuccessful appeals, Willingham was executed Feb. 17, 2004. The incident has been given increased attention after several independent reviews of the arson investigation claim it based its conclusions on faulty reasoning.

Demonstrators also voiced their opposition to Gov. Rick Perry’s comments and actions this month regarding Willingham’s execution.

At a press conference after a Texas Association of Realtors luncheon two weeks ago, Perry called Willingham “a monster” and said that multiple testimonies and the fact that the court upheld the jury’s verdict proved that Willingham was guilty. Perry told the media to not be misled by anti-death penalty “propaganda.”

The Texas Forensic Science Commission hired Baltimore fire expert Craig Beyler to investigate Willingham’s case.

“The investigators had poor understandings of fire science and failed to acknowledge or apply the contemporaneous understanding of the limitations of fire indicators,” Beyler said in his August report. “A finding of arson could not be sustained.”

On Sept. 30, two days before the commission was set to meet and review Beyler’s report, Perry removed three members of the commission, including the chairman, who he replaced with Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. Bradley canceled the Oct. 2 meeting, which has yet to be rescheduled.

“If we had any of the number of experts that have come forth now and given testimony in this case, Todd Willingham would have never been convicted. He would have never been executed. He probably never would have even been tried,” said Walter Reaves, Willingham’s lawyer during the appeals process.

Reaves said he is seeking post-mortem exoneration of Willingham as well as a formal apology. He said that reports by arson experts indicating that Willingham did not set the fire were not given a fair consideration during the appeals process.

“[Lawmakers] need to fix the procedural problems with police and prosecutorial misconduct in this state before we even think about executing people,” said Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel to The Innocence Project of Texas.

After an examination of Willingham’s case, the project believes he was unjustly put to death, Blackburn said.

Multiple families appeared at the event showing support for men currently on death row including Rodney Reed, who is accused of the 1996 rape and murder of Stacey Stites.

“I am out here every chance I get and I am going to keep on doing it even after my brother comes home because the death penalty is wrong,” said Roderick Reed, Rodney Reed’s brother. “I got involved because of my brother, but I am going to stay with it until the end to see it is abolished.”

Bruno Mortan/The Daily Texan
Jane Chamberlain holds her homemade
sign as exonerated prisoners talk about their
experiences on death row during an anti-death penalty
march held on Saturday afternoon.

Joshua Sander's of the Austin American-Statesman has an article in the front page of Sunday's Metro section titled, "Protesters march to call for an end to executions."

Anti-death penalty protesters gathered at the Capitol on Saturday in part to voice their disapproval of Gov. Rick Perry's remarks this month regarding Cameron Todd Willingham, the Corsicana man convicted of setting a fire that killed his three young children on Dec. 23, 1991.

The 10th annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty occurred in the midst of a renewed debate over capital punishment, largely spurred by Willingham's case. Most recently, former Texas Gov. Mark White said the state should reconsider its use of capital punishment "so we don't look up one day and determine that we, as the State of Texas, have executed someone who in fact was innocent."

White's comments came as Perry has been criticized for replacing four members of the Texas Forensics Commission and delaying consideration of a fire scientist's report questioning the 2004 execution of Willingham. Perry has described Willingham as a "monster" and said he is certain of his guilt.

One of the lawyers who represented Willingham in his appeals disagreed.

"Todd Willingham was a person who deserved to be treated fairly, and he didn't get that," said Walter Reaves, Willingham's appellate attorney. "No one could ever make the case that if we knew then what we know now that he would have been convicted, tried and executed."

Jeff Blackburn, founder of the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, said that the Willingham case "represents an opportunity for Texas to fix a broken criminal justice system."

Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network, a nonprofit organization that aims to mobilize support for a moratorium on state executions, said about 50 organizations were responsible for organizing Saturday's march.

The event attracted hundreds of people, who carried signs with photographs of inmates currently on death row and posters bearing slogans such as "Stop All Executions."

About a dozen protesters sat on the steps of the Capitol, holding white posters with lists of the hundreds of inmates who have been executed in Texas since 1982, when the state resumed executions.

Austinite Jeanette Popp, 60, came to the march with a different perspective.

On Oct. 24, 1988, Popp's 20-year-old daughter, Nancy DePriest, was found dead with her hands bound behind her back at the North Austin Pizza Hut where she worked. Two men were wrongfully convicted of her death and served 12 years in prison. They were freed in 2001, after DNA evidence implicated another man.

The confessed killer, Achim Josef Marino, said that he had shot DePriest as part of a satanic sacrifice. Eventually, Popp lobbied for Marino to be spared the death penalty, which he was.

Despite the time that has passed, Popp said, the conversation on capital punishment has not changed.

"It's the 21st anniversary of my daughter's murder, and we're still talking about murdering people with the murdering machine," she said.

jsanders@statesman.com; 445-3630

"Protesters march against the death penalty" is Tristan Hallman's article in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News.

AUSTIN — A crowd of anti-death penalty protestors, fueled by the controversy over the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham and changes to the Texas Forensic Science Commission that is looking into the case, gathered at the steps of the Capitol on Saturday for the 10th annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Dozens of protesters marched down South Congress Avenue and recited chants for an end to capital punishment and declared that Gov. Rick Perry was guilty of homicide. The goal, said Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network, was to make Perry admit to Willingham’s innocence and to end the death penalty, which several speakers called corrupt, racist and biased against the poor.

Willingham was convicted of the murder of his three young daughters by setting fire to his Corsicana home in 1991. Recent investigations have questioned the charge of arson.

“We’re certainly convinced now after a review by expert scientific investigators that there is no evidence of arson,” Cobb said.

Joining the protesters were exonerated ex-death row inmates Curtis McCarthy, Ron Keine and Shujaa Graham. Corey Session, brother of Timothy Cole, a man who died in a Texas prison in 1999, spoke as well. Cole’s posthumous exoneration has led to the creation of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, which held its first meeting Friday. Session said he believed Willingham would be exonerated if his case were heard by an advisory panel.

Willingham’s appellate attorney, Walter Reaves, and Willingham’s pen pal and frequent death row visitor, Elizabeth Gilbert, spoke at the event. Gilbert, who said she has three binders full of letters from Willingham, said that after looking into his case, she’s convinced of his innocence.

“Todd was a very caring person,” said Gilbert, who began corresponding with and visiting Willingham in 1999 after getting his information at an anti-death penalty demonstration in Philadelphia. “He was a considerate, polite, funny, smart person. He was a real human being.”

Eugenia Willingham, mother of Willingham, originally was scheduled speak but decided not to. She said she canceled at the last minute in part because she was tired and the drive from her home in Ardmore, Okla., was long. She also said she didn’t want to be a distraction from the focus on her son’s case.

However, Willingham said she also isn’t entirely against the death penalty.

“I feel there probably should be a death penalty,” she said. “But I feel like the system should be reformed in a way so that innocent people aren’t executed. I feel like there are too many people on death row that are innocent.”

Although there had been speculation that the case against Willingham was flawed, much of the national attention on Willingham came after Perry’s decision to not reappoint four state forensic panelists while they were investigating the case. Perry said they were replaced because their terms had expired.

Craig Beyler, a Maryland-based arson expert who had been hired by the Forensic Science Commission, has spoken out against Perry’s action and, in his report, questioned the finding of arson.

Perry responded to Beyler’s criticism by calling Willingham a “monster” and saying Beyler is politically motivated. Beyler has denied those claims.

Perry spokesman Allison Castle said Perry stands by his support for the death penalty. Castle noted that Willingham’s conviction was upheld by nine courts and the death penalty has been upheld as a punishment by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Death penalty opponents rally at Capitol" is Jay Root's article for the Associated Press.

AUSTIN — Death penalty opponents, convinced an innocent man was executed in 2004, staged a rally Saturday at the Texas Capitol to call for a moratorium on capital punishment and to highlight the controversial case of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Willingham was convicted of capital murder for the 1991 deaths of his three children in a fire at their Corsicana home. Forensic scientists have called into question arson evidence used to convict Willingham, who maintained his innocence until his death by lethal injection.

Dozens of protesters marched from the Capitol down Congress Avenue, waving placards and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, the death penalty has got to go.”

Organizers of the rally said they want to bring attention to the Willingham case and Gov. Rick Perry's shakeup of the commission that was investigating the science used to convict him.

“We urge the people and the governor to take a look at this case and examine the new evidence,” said Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network. “There is no scientific evidence of arson in this case, and if there was no arson, there was no crime ... We want Texas to admit that it's made a tragic mistake here.”

The governor has come under fire for replacing members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission just before they were to review a new report critical of the arson science used in the capital murder case. Perry has dismissed the criticism as anti-death penalty propaganda, and says the panel will move forward with the investigation. Speaking at a news conference this month, Perry called Willingham a “monster” who beat his wife and then killed his children.

One of the speakers at the event, Willingham friend Elizabeth Gilbert, said she was sickened by Perry's comments. Gilbert, a Houston teacher, befriended Willingham when he was behind bars and became his advocate, helping to spearhead a re-examination of his case.

“They are still continuing to throw mud at Todd to keep people's attention away from the fact that there wasn't an arson case,” she said.

Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle, noting that Willingham's conviction was upheld despite numerous appeals, said the governor believed he was guilty.

“Like most Texans, Gov. Perry supports the death penalty for those who commit the most heinous crimes,” she added.

Willingham's mother, Eugenia Willingham, had been scheduled to speak at the rally but was unable to attend. In a written statement released by event organizers, she told of letters she had received from death row inmates saying her son's execution has caused appeals courts to take a closer look at their cases.

“This won't bring Todd back, but I take comfort in knowing that others may be freed because of him,” she wrote.

UPI: "Texans rally against death penalty"

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- Anti-execution activists say the state of Texas must end its death penalty practices.

The 10th annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty held Saturday in Austin drew hundreds of anti-death penalty activists, many spurred by the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 after a scientific report cast doubt on his 1991 triple murder conviction, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been criticized for allegedly failing to read a fire scientist's report questioning Willingham's then-pending execution for the deaths of his three daughters in a house fire. Perry has responded by describing Willingham as a "monster" and saying he is certain of his guilt.

Jeff Blackburn, founder of the Innocence Project of Texas, attended the march and told the American-Statesman the Willingham case "represents an opportunity for Texas to fix a broken criminal justice system."

The newspaper said some protesters carried posters bearing the names of hundreds of inmates executed in Texas since 1982.

The Daily Texan: March Against the Death Penalty

The following is Hooman Hedayati's column in today's The Daily Texan about the 10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Would you oppose the death penalty if it were proven that Texas has executed an innocent man? If so, remember this name: Cameron Todd Willingham. He was innocent and Texas executed him. There are plenty of executed death-row inmates with strong claims of innocence, such as David Spence, Ruben Cantu, Carlos De Luna and Gary Graham. But the state of Texas has never admitted to killing an innocent person. Willingham’s case could become the first case in which the state of Texas will have to admit that it made
a mistake.

Willingham was executed for arson and murder in 2004. He professed his innocence until he was strapped down on the execution gurney, saying “I am an innocent man — convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do.”

Now, we know that he was telling the truth. In August, Craig Beyler, the investigator hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to review the Willingham case, released his report in which he found that “a finding of arson could not be sustained” by a scientific analysis. He concluded that the fire in the Willingham case was accidental and not arson. In fact, there was no arson, so there was no crime.

David Grann wrote a 16,000-word article for The New Yorker in which he discredited all the evidence used to convict and sentence Willingham. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project said, “After reading Grann’s report, fair-minded people will know beyond a reasonable doubt that an innocent person was executed.”

The proven execution of an innocent person should have resulted in a call by Gov. Rick Perry for a statewide moratorium on executions and a commission to conduct a comprehensive study of the Texas death penalty system. But shortly before a scheduled Texas Forensic Science Commission meeting to discuss this case, in a move that looks like an election-year cover-up, Perry replaced several members of the commission with his own political allies, including John Bradley, a tough-on-crime Williamson County defense attorney, as chairman. Bradley canceled the public hearing indefinitely, leaving the investigation in limbo.

Scott Cobb, director of the Texas Moratorium Network, said, “No matter how things turn out, people are looking at the death penalty in a new light. They’re thinking if it could have happened to Willingham, then it could happen to many other people.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 2006 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.”

This Saturday, at the 10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries will gather at the Texas Capitol to raise their voices and shout out Todd Willingham’s name. The march is a gathering of activists, exonerated inmates and family members of the victims and those on death row.

Eugenia Willingham, mother of Todd Willingham, will be among the special guests at the march on Saturday at 2 p.m. on the South Steps of the Capitol.

On Friday, students can also join a panel discussion with exonerated death-row inmates Shujaa Graham and Curtis McCarty (7 p.m. in the Texas Union’s Sinclair Suite, Room 3.128).

I encourage everyone to attend the march to support the Willingham family as they fight to prove that Todd Willingham was innocent.

For more information and to sign a petition, visit camerontoddwillingham.com and marchforabolition.org.

Hedayati is a government and Middle Eastern studies senior and member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.