A man executed in Texas for deaths related to arson was innocent: the fire was not arson:

Four of the nation’s top arson experts have concluded that the state of Texas executed a man in 2004 based on scientifically invalid evidence, and on Tuesday they called for an official reinvestigation of the case.

In their report, the experts, assembled by the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization responsible for scores of exonerations, concluded that the conviction and 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson-murders of his three daughters were based on interpretations by fire investigators that have been scientifically disproved.

… The experts were asked to perform an independent review of the evidence after an investigation by the Tribune that showed Willingham had been found guilty on arson theories that have been repudiated by scientific advances. In fact, many of the theories were simply lore that had been handed down by generations of arson investigators who relied on what they were told.

The report’s conclusions match the findings of the Tribune, published in December 2004. The newspaper began investigating the Willingham case following an October 2004 series, “Forensics Under the Microscope,” which examined the use of forensics in the courtroom, including the continued use of disproved arson theories to obtain convictions.

In strong language harshly critical of the investigation of the 1991 fire in Corsicana, southeast of Dallas, the report said evidence examined in the Willingham case and “relied upon by fire investigators” was the type of evidence “routinely created by accidental fires.”

… The arson report singled out the testimony at Willingham’s trial of Manuel Vasquez, a deputy state fire marshal, who said he found numerous indicators in the debris that he interpreted as evidence that Willingham intentionally set the fire.

“Each and every one of the `indicators’ listed by Mr. Vasquez means absolutely nothing,” the report states.

This was inevitable. There is no way to be one hundred percent sure that one hundred percent of the people who are executed are guilty. Knowing that, the country still continues to put people to death. It is as if Ford built a car knowing that some small percentage of them would spontaneously combust at highway speeds and went ahead and sold them anyway. We would call the executive who green-lighted the sales a murderer and probably put him in jail. Yet when public servants devise a justice in which they know some small percentage of people executed will be innocent, they are a law and order candidate. Some of them with clever campaign managers even manage to become President.