The reason his bringing up the polygraph test is wrong is not because it shows a lack of respect for the fifth amendment but because it conveys no information whatsoever about Willingham’s guilt or innocence. An innocent man, assuming he’s not an idiot, would also have refused to take a polygraph test under those circumstances.

The same applies to many of Jackson’s other arguments. Jackson knows that the refrigerator had been in precisely the same place for quite some time. That’s critical for determining whether the position of the refrigerator is an indication of Willingham’s guilt. But Jackson doesn’t tell you that and he knows most of the people reading him won’t know that.

Jackson doesn’t attempt to rehabilitate the discredited expert testimony; instead, he claims that a refusal to testify by Willingham is a basis for believing that Willingham is guilty. You’re right in your points on the difficulties faced by defendants in deciding whether to take a polygraph, but the truly shocking point is that Jackson, now sitting on the bench, is seemingly willing to regard such a refusal as an indication of guilt

Taking a polygraph is a lose/lose/lose proposition. If you pass, everyone pretends it never happened and you can’t mention it in court. If you fail, you never hear the end of it even if the failure was erroneous. If you refuse, well, we see here what happens.

Had Willingham been guilty, he would very likely have failed the polygraph. If he was innocent, he would likely have passed it, but still could have failed it due to nervousness, confusion, or coercion.

It is, however, quite hard for a guilty person to pass a polygraph test unless they have gone to quite some effort to learn how to do it. A polygraph test is basically a coercive interrogation likely to produce false confessions.

Same goes with the original arson investigator – he should never be allowed to investigate arson, or fires, for the rest of his life. He has blood on his hands. He murdered an innocent man out of gross incompetence (junk science) and witch-hunting.

Same goes with the police, prosecution, the defense.

Same goes with board that rejected the 11th hour appeal from Hurst. It especially goes to them. Thy knowingly sent an innocent man to death. The evidence and science by that time were crystal clear (no arson – scientifically proven). But they chose to ignore it, and sent an innocent man to his death. I hope that each one of those individuals live the rest of their lives with crushing, suffocating guilt.

Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

First the guy tragically loses his 2 year old daughter and twin babies in the fire. Then he’s falsely accused and convicted of arson and murder of his own children. Then he’s put to death.

Another thing that is so shocking I can’t hardly believe it, it’s too surreal. They labeled Willingham a sociopath on the sole grounds that he had a skull tatoo and art work from his favorite heavy metal bands (including Led Zeppelin). Wow. Just Wow.

My God, but does Texas ever suck, or what. What a bunch of incompetent, immoral, horrific demons they are (the laws, courts, and police enforcement)

For instance, Willingham’s lack of smoke inhalation actually makes sense, according to the fire experts who have now looked at the case, because their controlled recreations make his story (that the fire was contained in one room, until it suddenly burst into the rest of the house and sent him fleeing) seem quite likely.

And witnesses (including Willingham’s ex-wife) have now firmly established that the refrigerator was *always* blocking the back door — for months before the fire. So it’s nonsense to accuse Willingham of having put it there to block an escape route.

How dismaying to see a former prosecutor (now Judge) peddling nonsense instead of addressing the real issues in the case. I pray every day that I bring more honor than he to my profession.

Did the State not give enough money for the defense to conduct its own arson investigation, forcing instead a cursory review of the State’s investigation? Or did the defense hire an incompetent investigator? Why did the defense investigator not point out the most obvious, gaping flaws in the State’s evidence? (For example, that accelerant traces were not found in all but one of the many place’s the State’s theory of the fire would have required it to have been used.)

There is much more blame to go around in this case, and this angle deserves to be investigated.

Scientific testing should be “blind” wherever possible. For example, fingerprint or DNA evidence should ask the tester to ask which one of, say, five examples the DNA or fingerprint in question matches.

For arson evidence, samples both from the scene and from “neutral” scenes should be sent to labs to test for accellerant residue, etc.

Tuesday night’s last statement was a first for most of those in attendance. A Huntsville Item reporter who covers executions, Associated Press writer Michael Graczyk and Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information officer Michelle Lyons were all hard-pressed to recall a similar obscenity-filled tirade.

Lyons said it is “rare to have someone direct their anger that way. I mean, we’ve had (prisoners) be angry before, but not like this.”