Frontline Tuesday @9PM--Willingham case reviewed (Houston, Keller: lawyer, school, university)

[loves2read]

the PBS program Frontline--award winning documentary series--will offer a review of the Todd Willingham execution and arson investigation this Tuesday night--it is on the PBS channel here -- 13--

Frontline does some great documentaries and while many people conside PBS a "liberal" station--Frontline does well-balanced programs with both sides of issues presented...I think this is likely to be impartial but very damaging to the Texas justice system, the arson investigation performed, and Govenor Perry's role in preventing a new assessment of the arson evidence in time to prevent the execution...

Anyone who will vote for govenor this November should watch this program with an open mind and consider the fact that what happened this time COULD happen to almost anyone when the truth is obscured by the agencies that are supposed to uncover it.

this is link to the on-line recap of the program and the information it will present--
FRONTLINE: Death by Fire | PBS

[Nomadic9460678748]

You should read the New Yorker piece about the Willingham case. It's harrowing.

On a very similar note, Professor David Dow out of the University of Houston Law Center and a litigator with that school's Innocence Project gave a very passionate commentary at this weekend's Texas Book Festival regarding the case for which Sharon Keller was very recently un-sanctioned, or whatever the phrase. Pitiful.

For Professor Dow the issue was not and should not have been that Keller refused to accept their filing because they "closed at 5." That was the issue the media chose to emphasize. There details which should have had significant bearing on the procedural outcomes of that case. One, the defendant for whom the filing was being performed was mentally retarded. He had an IQ of 65. The State of Texas was very eager to execute him anyway. Two, the lawyer assigned to the defendant in question had been recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and twice asked two different appeals courts to have himself removed for fear that his mental impairments would not allow him to provide his client with the most vigorous defense. Both courts refused. They refused. Texas decided it made more sense to execute a mentally retarded man with infirm counsel, rather than imprison him for life.