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    Back to To the Point

    To the Point

    Capital Punishment, Due Process and the Constitution

    Three young children died in a house fire in Corsicana, Texas in 1991. In a two-day trial, their father, Cameron Todd Willingham, was convicted of murdering them by setting the fire.

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    By Warren Olney • May 12, 2014 • 1 min read

    Three young children died in a house fire in Corsicana, Texas in 1991. In a two-day trial, their father, Cameron Todd Willingham, was convicted of murdering them by setting the fire. Just before he was scheduled for execution in 2004, an independent investigator reported that the fire was caused by accident, not by arson as Willingham's jury had been told. He was executed anyway. Since then two more investigations have found no evidence of arson. One was commissioned by the State of Texas. Did the state execute an innocent man? If the evidence was faulty, does the Constitution require that his life must be saved, or does his "full and free trial" justify the death penalty anyway?

    The full episode

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    Capital Punishment, Due Process and the Constitution
    1. 0:00Obama Makes the Case for Financial Regulatory Reform
    2. 7:47Capital Punishment, Due Process and the ConstitutionYou’re reading this
    3. 42:59Losing Their Cool: Joe, Serena and Kanye
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      Warren Olney

      former KCRW broadcaster

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      Andrea Brody

      Senior Producer, KCRW's Life Examined and To the Point podcast

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      Sonya Geis

      Senior Managing Editor

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      Karen Radziner

      Managing Producer, To the Point & Which Way LA?

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      David Grann

      Author of “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” and “The Lost City of Z” ; The New Yorker

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      Barry Matson

      Deputy Director, Alabama District Attorney’s Association

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      Peter Neufeld

      Co-director of the Innocence Project

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    The full episode

    2 of 3
    Capital Punishment, Due Process and the Constitution
    1. 0:00Obama Makes the Case for Financial Regulatory Reform
    2. 7:47Capital Punishment, Due Process and the ConstitutionYou’re reading this
    3. 42:59Losing Their Cool: Joe, Serena and Kanye
    Back to To the Point