Cameron Todd Willingham Murder Case Essay

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Sydney Warner 4th Period November 28, 2012 Capital Punishment February 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the murders of his three young daughters and arson. The claim was made the Willingham set the house on fire while his children were sleeping and they perished in the flames. Throughout his trial and even in his final moments he continued to claim his innocence. Todd Willingham was convicted under a flawed fire investigation. The methods of determining whether or not a fire was intentionally ignited at the time were skewed. Gerald Hurst, with a Ph.D. in high energy chemistry, wrote a report on the flaws in the case shortly before Todd Willingham’s execution stating, “Flashover had left natural patterns on the floor that all post-flashover fires tend to leave behind, and those had been misidentified as pour patterns, and thus the fire had been labeled an arson.”(“Interview Gerald Hurst”) If in fact Cameron Todd Willingham is found…show more content…
“Eighty-eight percent of the country’s top criminologists do not believe that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide.” (M. Radelet & T. Lacook “Views of Leading Criminologists”) From 1996 to 2009 there has always been at least a twenty-eight percent difference in the murder rate between states with and without the death penalty. States with the death penalty always held a higher percentage. Since Canada’s abolition of the death penalty in 1976 the murder rate has fallen 26 percent. There has not been one effective study done that proves capital punishment to be an effective punishment. People who commit crimes such as murder do not consider the consequences for their actions, so in no way can there be a deterrent if in their mind there is not one to consider. It is not logical for capital punishment to be an effective discipline if states who exercise the use of the death penalty have higher homicide rates than those who

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