The new Frontline documentary about the Todd Willingham case, “Death by Fire” aired last night on TV and is now online. Click here to visit the Frontline website and watch the film online. It is embedded below divided into 6 parts.

Frontline also has a DVD of “Death by Fire” available for sale for $24.99.

11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty
October 30, 2010
2 PM
Austin, Texas
The Capitol (11th and Congress)

Gary Drinkard, an innocent man who spent almost six years on death row in Alabama, will be a special guest at the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty on October 30 at the Texas Capitol in Austin at 2 PM. Gary was released from death row on May 25, 2001. He will join exonerees Shujaa Graham, Curtis McCarty, Ron Keine, Albert Burrell and Greg Wilhoit at the march. Gary is coming to the march courtesy of Witness to Innocence.

Gary Drinkard was sentenced to death in 1995 for the robbery and murder of a 65-year-old automotive junk dealer in Decatur, Alabama. He was assigned two court-appointed lawyers; one specialized in collections and commercial work and another represented creditors in foreclosures and bankruptcy cases. These lawyers failed to present two witnesses: physicians who would have testified that Gary’s recent back injury made committing the crime a physical impossibility. Despite being home at the time of the murders, Gary was convicted and given the death sentence.

Yet Gary maintained his innocence, barely believing his sentence. The conviction rested primarily on testimony by Gary’s half-sister and her common-law husband, both facing charges for unrelated crimes. In exchange for testifying, all the charges against Gary’s half-sister were dismissed.

“The system is broken,” he says. “I don’t think the death penalty is appropriate for anyone. God is the only one who has the right to take a life.”

In 2000, two years after the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction, the state Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for a new trial based on prosecutorial misconduct. Afterwards, the Southern Center for Human Rights, working with lawyers Richard Jaffe and John Mays, won him an acquittal in 2001. The Center later presented Gary to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in order to illustrate the urgent demand for competent lawyers for those facing the death penalty.

“The guys there are just like you and I,” Gary said of those he met on death row. “People depict them as animals in a cage to be kept in chains. But they’re human beings. They’re decent human beings. Some made a bad mistake. But people change. Some guys down there need to be down there for a long, long time, maybe the rest of their lives. But a lot of guys down there changed and would never harm someone again.” Today, Gary lives and works in Cullman, Alabama, and is active in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

The annual march is a joint project organized by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations: Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Death Penalty Free Austin, and Kids Against the Death Penalty. Other sponsors include Journey of Hope…From Violence to Healing.

The website Criminal Justice Degree has created a list of the Top 50 Death Penalty Blogs. We are glad to see that the Texas Moratorium Network blog made the list. Also making the list is another TMN site, Cameron Todd Willingham – Innocent and Executed (camerontoddwillingham.com).

The list contains a special section listing leading blogs in Texas dealing with the death penalty and we are glad to see a few of our friends listed in that section and on the list of the top 50 blogs and web resources overall, including Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center and Execution Watch, from Houston.

Other blogs making the top 50 list include the Texas Death Penalty blog run by the Dallas Morning News, the Journey of Hope blog, the Innocence Project, Campaign to End the Death Penalty,  Death Penalty Focus (California), the Death Penalty Information Center, Sister Helen Prejean and others.

Read the full list here.

The Texas Fire Marshal’s Association is holding its 12th Annual Texas Fire Marshals’ Conference Oct 18-22 in Austin at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It will be interesting to see if any of their members will criticize State Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado for writing a letter to the Texas Forensic Science Commission standing by his agency’s role in the error-filled fire investigation that led to the conviction of Todd Willingham. Maldonado is scheduled to speak Monday at 9 AM to welcome attendees and again on Thursday Oct 21 from 1-1:50 to give an update from the State Fire Marshal’s Office (see the full schedule here).

The Texas Tribune reported that during the Court of Inquiry last Thursday  “(Barry) Scheck asked fire expert John Lentini to explain current fire marshal Paul Maldonado’s continued support of Vasquez’s investigations. “He is misinformed,” Lentini said, adding that Maldonado’s position “cannot be explained in terms of valid science or logic.”

The Austin American-Statesman reported on Maldonado’s letter on Sept 8:

The State Fire Marshal’s Office stands behind its controversial conclusion that Cameron Todd Willingham started the house fire that killed his three children in 1991, contradicting arson experts and scientists who insist the agency relied on bad science in its investigation.

In a pointed letter to the Texas Forensic Science Commission , which is nearing the end of a contentious review of the Willingham arson investigation, Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado defended his agency’s handling of the case that led to Willingham’s execution in 2004.

In July, the commission announced a tentative finding that investigators employed “flawed science” — including now-debunked beliefs that certain fire behaviors point to arson — to conclude that Willingham intentionally set fire to his Corsicana home.

But Maldonado said his agency’s investigation remains valid, even after modern, scientific arson standards are applied.

“We stand by the original investigator’s report and conclusions,” Maldonado said in his Aug. 20 letter to the commission. “Should any subsequent analysis be performed to test other theories and possibilities of the cause and origin of the fire, we will of course re-examine the report again.”