And update to the previous post where Rob Sama's comment made me click some links I hadn't.

There's too many things that don't look right in this.
The prosecutor's op ed.
From some a paper called the Corsicana Daily Sun.

First, what the heck is a French newspaper doing writing about a deal in Texas?

This is from the story linked in the previous post
As I note in my story, there is evidence that Willingham hit his wife, even when she was pregnant, but there were no police reports or medical evidence indicating that Willingham had tried to abort or kill his children. And Willingham’s wife insisted during the trial and under interrogation that Willingham had not physically abused the children. She told police, “Our kids were spoiled rotten.”

This is a quote from the original story about this case written in 1992.
the defendant’s wife who testified her children were not afraid of their father, denied her husband beat her or tried to kill the twins while she was pregnant with them by kicking her in the stomach.
Mrs. Willingham said she was not an abused or battered wife...snip...
“Me and Todd argued just like anybody else,” she said. “A lot of times, Todd got more bruises and stuff than I did.”

Okay, but Grann says that we know that he beat her when she was pregnant, yet there she is denying it.

I knew a girl once who was beaten by her father and her boyfriends. Another friend once asked her why she put up with it, she answered, "Because it shows he loves me." We were both creeped out by that answer.
I dated a girl once whose father beat her. One time we were arguing about something and I got really mad and punched the roof of my car (I did that a lot when I was 16-20), she got this weird smile, it was as if she was looking forward to me hitting her. That creeped me out too. (That's where I learned the truth of the statement that guys who beat women are pussies. I was in her house when he started hitting her, I was 16 he was a workingman's 45 or so, I grabbed him and tossed him across the kitchen and when he tried to hit me, it was like a girl/slappy fight. I could have totally kicked his ass, all I did was keep him from hitting me while yelling, "Chill out man". Since then, I've taken every opportunity to humiliate chumps like that. I do everything I can to get them to throw a punch and laugh in their faces when they don't, calling them the pussies they are)

Women who put up with being beaten have weird relationships with their beaters. So I don't know if I would find her testimony credible.

I do have to wonder if this was the deciding factor (Grigson is a psychiatrist)
Grigson testified that a person who had experienced the incidents prosecution witnesses testified Willingham had experienced – including killing a dog by beating in the head with a stick and running it over with an automobile – was a sociopath.

Grigson defined a sociopath as one who does not have a conscious, who manipulates people, who has a disregard for other’s people property and – in its most severe form – has a disregard for other human beings.

Should a sociopath become involved in extremely violent activities before the age of 30, there is virtually no type of medical treatment and no type of medicine that can treat that person, Grigson testified under questioning by Jackson. He also said that such a person would “absolutely” be a continuing threat in the future, a question the jurors must answer when deciding whether to sentence Willingham to death.

So maybe they just decided he needed killin?

I'm not sure how that affects how I feel about this.
On the one hand, we don't need people deciding that someone needs killin for non-death-penalty reasons, on the other hand, this made it through the appeals courts.

I'm more confused, but less sure he's innocent.

Posted by: Veeshir at 08:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 689 words, total size 5 kb.