Texas is big, religious, and has government-sanctioned death. Bibles describe situations where taking a person's life is just punishment. When communities glean morality from a book that glorifies revenge, they become indiscriminate, amoral zombies.
In 1991, Todd Willingham, not the most honorable man, was sentenced to die for burning his house and three children. Critically, in 2004, just four days before Willingham’s scheduled death by injection, renown arson expert and chemist Dr. Gerald Hurst submitted a report regarding the evidence:
The fire investigation report of the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office in this case is a remarkable document. On first reading, a contemporary fire origin and cause analyst might well wonder how anyone could make so many critical errors in interpreting the evidence. However, when the report is looked at in the context of its time and in light of a few key advances that have been made in the fire investigation field in the last dozen years, it becomes obvious that the report more or less simply reflects the shortcomings in the state of the art prior to the beginning of serious efforts to introduce standards and to test old theories that had previously been accepted on faith.
The original evidence for arson was invalid. Todd Willingham was innocent. Yet Governor Rick Perry denied a stay of execution. At 6:20pm on February 17th, 2004, the United States government and the Texas Governor knowingly authorized the murder of an innocent man. On faith and superstition.
