WTF is wrong with Texas? More on Cameron Todd Wilingham and the Last Meals Paintings

It seems I can’t shake off thoughts about the Cameron Todd Willingham story and it’s a good thing – it means a lot of citizens of Texas won’t be able too either. While I’ve long believed capital punishment is a grievous wrong, the execution of an innocent man must give pause to even the most ardent supporter of the death penalty.

The crime he was accused and convicted of was shocking – the murder of his 3 young daughters in a deliberately set house fire. As it turns out, however, the fire Willingham was executed for in 2004 was likely accidental.

“I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."

While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to 4 fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.

Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction."~ Chicago Tribune, December 2004

In the 5 plus years since the Chicago Tribune article, evidence continues to mount that the fire was not deliberately set.

Last Meal: Cameron Todd Willingham was the second in my series of paintings about the death penalty and quite possibly the most taxing mentally. Aside from the chilling details of the case, the difficulty I routinely have in preparing and eating the requested meal in preparation of the composition (I’m already squirming to remove myself emotionally from the process by introducing the technical aspect of the work) was multiplied by Willingham’s symbolically grim request of 3 BBQ ribs. (I could barely choke them down, so I’m not sure how he did.) Revealing to my friend, Ed that I actually ate the meal prior to painting it, he wrote that it “help[ed] make sense of the unnerving intimacy of [the] paintings.”

These paintings are deeply intimate to me and because of this, I rarely discuss them in any detail; I do not want to appear to inject myself into someone else’s tragedy, but wrestle with the fact that I create them to encourage debate around the issue. If I don’t dust them off and talk about them, who will?

While I didn’t know Todd Willingham or his family, I can not consider his case without imagining what it must be like to lose your children to a fire you witnessed, be arrested for their murders, grieve alone in prison, lose your wife, and spend 12 years on Death Row to be executed, knowing that evidence of your innocence was submitted to the state in time for a stay. Choke on those ribs? I choked on them every day that I stood in front of that painting and that's nothing compared to the anger Willingham likely felt.

Which brings us circuitously back to Governor Perry and today’s news in this 18 year old story.

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision to replace 3 members of the Texas Forensic Commission on the very day they were to review the evidence in the Cameron Todd Willingham case is extremely troubling; not only was today’s widely anticipated meeting cancelled, it is reported to have set the Commission’s work back by several weeks.

The clip below from this evening's news features reactions to Perry's shakeup of the commission by author Kerry Cook ('Chasing Justice') who spent 20 years on death row before being cleared by DNA evidence and Aliece Watts, one of the commissioners replaced by the governor.


So, WTF is wrong with Texas? Looks like it starts at the top.

If you’re reading this on facebook and the clip from tonight’s broadcast isn’t attached, you can check out my blog here.