The meeting of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee at which Senator John Whitmire will bring in for questioning the new chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, John Bradley, is set for 10 AM at the Capitol in Austin on Nov. 10.

Eugenia Willingham has written an article published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram entitled, “So many questions that refuse to go away“.

Nearly 18 years ago, a long nightmare began for my family. Every time we think the truth is finally coming to light, a new twist reopens old wounds.

In 1991 my stepson, Cameron Todd Willingham, woke up to discover his Corsicana house on fire. The events that followed have been twisted by people with their own agenda. I am speaking out now because it is time for the truth in this case.

The evidence that was used to convict Todd has been discredited by experts and witnesses. Since Todd’s execution in 2004, several independent experts have concluded that the forensic analysis at Todd’s trial was wrong.

Gov. Rick Perry ignored an expert’s report about the evidence and refused to delay Todd’s execution. Five years later, Perry has interfered with the Texas Forensic Science Commission’s investigation of the case. It’s not clear when the commission will resume its work, but our family hopes it happens soon.

Meanwhile, Perry and others — including the man who prosecuted Todd, the defense attorney from Todd’s trial who I think defended him very poorly, and some members of the media in Texas — have focused on Todd’s character. For weeks, my family and I have seen reports about what a “monster” Todd was. The truth is that Todd was sometimes difficult, and his marriage was not always a happy one. That’s not a crime punishable by lethal injection.

When Todd was 13 months old, I married his father and we raised him together. I found a boy who was angry and confused, but also smart and compassionate. I helped that boy grow into a man who did everything he could to provide for his family and fill his children’s lives with love.

Todd loved his children. We all did. I have always believed he was innocent, even before the recent revelations about the evidence that was used against him.

I don’t want to walk through every detail of the evidence, but there are two new arguments from the media and others that I want to address.

First, Todd’s ex-wife reportedly says now that he confessed to her. I don’t believe this is true. More importantly, I don’t understand how anyone can believe what his ex-wife says, given how much her story has changed and how often it has changed. In my eyes, she is simply not credible after so many versions of this story, which makes the evidence — or lack thereof — all the more important.

Second, the fact that Todd didn’t run into a burning home is not proof that he set the fire. He tried to go back into the house and authorities had to restrain him. Even if that weren’t the case, human instinct prevents people from running into fires that will kill them. We may all think we would run into a serious fire to rescue someone, but human nature takes over in the moment.

People are entitled to their opinions about the death penalty. But we don’t execute people for having a bad marriage and a complicated personality.

My family has lost three beautiful little children and their loving father. We want answers. We want to know how the justice system got so badly off-track in Todd’s case, and we want to know how many other families have been devastated by erroneous evidence in arson cases in Texas.

Attacking my son won’t change the troubling lack of evidence in his case, and it won’t answer questions that refuse to go away.

Eugenia Willingham of Ardmore, Okla., is the stepmother of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Kristian Oliver, who is scheduled for execution in Texas on Thursday, November 5, was sentenced to death by a jury whose members consulted the Bible during their deliberations of whether Oliver should receive the death penalty.

During deliberations on sentencing, one of the jurors apparently read the following passage aloud to his fellow jurors: “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.” Another juror, a death penalty supporter, later told the media that “about 80 per cent” of the jurors had “brought scripture into the deliberation”, and that if civil law and biblical law were in conflict, the latter should prevail. And he said that if he had been told he could not consult the Bible, “I would have left the courtroom.”

According to the Waco Tribune:

Lawyers for Oliver argued in their appeals that the jury had been improperly swayed by Bibles that some jurors had brought with them into their deliberations. The case became the subject of a documentary Eye for an Eye and a book by Danish journalist Egon Clausen.

But the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2008 that while the Bibles should not have been allowed into the deliberation room, there was no clear evidence to indicate they had affected the jurors’ decision. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Oliver’s appeal, and on June 29, 145th District Court Judge Campbell Cox set a Nov. 5 execution date.

Please contact the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles by letter or fax and ask them to commute Khristian Oliver’s sentence to life.

Please express your concern that jurors at Khristian Oliver’s trial consulted the Bible during their sentencing deliberations and urge the Board to recommend that the Governor commute Khristian Oliver’s death sentence.

Call Governor Perry at 512 463 1782 or by contacting him through his website to accept a recommendation to commute Oliver’s sentence, or if such a recommendation is not forthcoming, to issue a 30-day stay of execution.

You may further explain that you are not seeking to excuse violent crime or to downplay the suffering caused to its victims.

Rissie L. Owens

Presiding Officer, Board of Pardons and Paroles,

Executive Clemency Section

8610 Shoal Creek Boulevard

Austin, TX 78757

Fax: 1 512 467 0945

Salutation: Dear Ms Owens

Governor Rick Perry

Office of the Governor

P.O. Box 12428

Austin, TX 78711-2428

Fax: 1 512 463 1849

Salutation: Dear Governor Perry

More on the case from the Guardian:

The Texas jury didn’t hesitate to find Khristian Oliver guilty of shooting and bludgeoning an elderly man to death. Oliver had stood over his bleeding victim, repeatedly hitting him in the head with a rifle butt before robbing his house.

But then came the difficult decision over whether to sentence Oliver to death, and that’s when the Bibles came into their own.

A clutch of jurors huddled in the corner with one reading aloud from the Book of Numbers: “The murderer shall surely be put to death” and “The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer.”

Another juror highlighted passages which she showed to a fellow juror: “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, the murderer shall surely be put to death.”

Ten years later Oliver, now 32, is just three weeks from execution. Two appeals courts have rejected his pleas for the jury’s death sentence in 1999 to be overturned on the grounds it was improperly influenced by references to the Bible. Some of the jurors have made no secret of the part their religious beliefs played in reaching their decision but the US supreme court has refused to take up a case that has been condemned as “a travesty”.

Amnesty International has said the use of biblical references “to decide life or death in a capital trial is deeply, deeply troubling” and called on the authorities in Texas, which has carried out nearly half of the 39 executions in the US this year, to commute the sentence.

Oliver’s lawyers called four members of the jury that convicted him to testify at an appeal hearing. At the hearing, one of them, Kenneth McHaney described how another juror, Kenneth Grace, read the Bible aloud to a group of jurors.

Donna Matheny showed McHaney a Bible in which she highlighted passages including one that “says that if a man strikes someone with an iron object so that he dies, then he is a murderer and should be put to death”.

Maxine Symmank told the court that she too had read a passage from the Book of Numbers: “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.” Another juror, Michael Brenneisen, told a journalist in 2002 that he asked himself “Is this the way the Lord would decide the case?” But Brenneisen also said that in discussing the Bible the jury “went both directions in our use of the scripture – forgiveness and judgement”.

McHaney said there were about four Bibles in the jury room.

A Texas state appeal court rejected Oliver’s plea to strike down the sentence because, it said, he had not “presented clear and convincing evidence” that the Bible influenced the jury’s decision. The court acknowledged that there was reference to the Bible by the jurors but said it was not improper. It said “a conscientious, dedicated” jury was “uninfluenced by any outside influence of any kind shown to the court in this hearing”.

A federal appeal court disagreed, saying that references to the Bible inside the jury room were improper but it still refused to overturn the death sentence on the grounds that Oliver’s lawyers had not proved that the readings influenced the death penalty decision. The court ruled that the jurors would have applied their own moral judgements which would, in any case, have been influenced by their religious beliefs.

Oliver’s lawyer until last month, Winston Cochran, said the rulings are the result of an impossible situation in which he was prevented at the first appeal hearing from directly asking the jurors if the Bible readings had an influence on their decision. The federal court then turned down a subsequent appeal on the grounds that the jurors had not explicitly said they were swayed by the Bible.

“We were prohibited from asking the question we were later being asked to prove,” he said.

Cochran also criticised the appeal court view that jurors were merely applying moral beliefs they already held.

“The problem is there was testimony the Bible was passed around and shown to people. It was part of the discussion. It wasn’t just used by individuals to reinforce their existing belief,” he said.

With the supreme court refusing to take up Oliver’s case, his remaining options are the Texas board of pardons and the state governor, Rick Perry. The board of pardons rarely recommends clemency and Perry is unlikely to set aside a death sentence in a deeply religious state on the grounds that jurors referred to the Bible.

CNN has published some letters written by Todd Willingham while he was on death row. They include a letter to his ex-wife Stacy from 2000, another to his stepmother Eugenia (dated 1994), a postcard to his friend Elizabeth Gilbert from 2001, and another to someone in which he writes about death.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

Travis County prosecutors moved to dismiss the murder indictments against the two remaining defendants in the 1991 yogurt shop murders after announcing in court today that they are still looking for the person whose DNA was found last year in one of the four teenage victims.

Assistant District Attorney Efrain De La Fuente said in court that the decision came because state District Judge Mike Lynch has ordered that a continuance in the case to conduct further DNA testing would not be considered.

“We are still testing,” he said.

The packed courtroom was quiet after Lynch ordered the dismissals. Defendants Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, who were once both convicted in the case, hugged their lawyers and supporters in court.

Outside the courtroom, lawyers for the defendants called on authorities to find the real killers.

“Those men that did this back in 1991, they left DNA in there,” said Scott lawyer Carlos Garcia. .”And I don’t know if those guys are still alive …but we have your DNA and sooner or later we are going to match your face to it.”

Springsteen lawyer Joe James Sawyer said that he and his client believe that it is the families of the slain girls who have suffered the most.

“We should reserve our sympathy for the families of those girls,” Sawyer said. “That is paramount.”

Scott, gripping his wife’s hand, was reserved outside court.

“This has been a long time in coming,” he said. “I’m happy to be here.”

At a press conference following the hearing, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg issued a statement that said in part: “Make no mistake, this is a difficult decision and one I would rather not have to make. I believe it is the best legal and strategic course to take and is the one that leaves us in the best possible posture to ultimately retry both Springsteen and Scott.”