Published on August 3, 2014
CORSICANA, Tex. — For more than 20 years, the prosecutor who
convicted Cameron Todd Willingham of murdering his three young daughters
has insisted that the authorities made no deals to secure the testimony
of the jailhouse informer who told jurors that Willingham confessed the
crime to him.
About this project: The investigation was reported and written by Maurice Possley for The Marshall Project, a new nonprofit news organization focused on the criminal justice system. Sign up for updates on their launch.
Since Willingham was executed in 2004,
officials have continued to defend the account of the informer, Johnny
E. Webb, even as a series of scientific experts have discredited the
forensic evidence that Willingham might have deliberately set the house
fire in which his toddlers were killed.
But now new evidence has revived questions
about Willingham’s guilt: In taped interviews, Webb, who has previously
both recanted and affirmed his testimony, gives his first detailed
account of how he lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the
former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webb’s prison sentence
for robbery and to arrange thousands of dollars in support from a
wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered letters and court files show
that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony
and to coordinate with the rancher, Charles S. Pearce Jr., to keep the
mercurial informer in line...
