Texans: Did we execute an innocent man?

Texans: Did we execute an innocent man?
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 23, 2010
Todd Willingham said he was innocent but was executed in February 2004 for the arson murders of his three kids.
(CNN)

A Texas state board revisited questions surrounding a 2004 execution on Friday amid warnings from critics of the controversial execution that the panel is trying to bury its own critical review of the case.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004, 13 years after a fire killed his three daughters. Prosecutors argued that Willingham deliberately set the 1991 blaze -- but three reviews of the evidence by outside experts have found the fire should not have been ruled arson.

The last of those reports was ordered by the Texas Forensic Sciences Commission, which has been looking into Willingham's execution since 2008. But a September 2009 shake-up by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has kept that panel from

reviewing the report, and the commission's new chairman has ordered a review of its operating rules. Critics say that may kill the probe.

"They are attempting permanently to keep the investigation from continuing and moving on, and I do believe it's because they don't like the direction the evidence is leading," Willingham's cousin, Pat Cox, said Thursday.

The Forensic Science Commission's chairman is now John Bradley, an Austin-area district attorney with a reputation as a staunch supporter of the death penalty...