Watch Now: Frontline Revisits Willingham

Nearly four years after

Frontline

premiered “Death by Fire,” an examination of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly setting a fire that killed his three young daughters, the series revisited the case in “Death by Fire 2,” which aired Tuesday evening on PBS.

 

The follow-up show, which questions if Texas executed an innocent man, was prompted by new allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the case against Willingham. In August, the Innocence Project filed a detailed grievance with the Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the State Bar of Texas urging investigation in to whether former Willingham prosecutor John Jackson failed to disclose a deal with jailhouse informant Johnny Webb, who testified that Willingham, while in jail, confessed to the arson murder of his three children. This supposed confession became indispensable evidence on the eve of Willingham’s execution in 2004 when an expert report was filed with courts, exposing the arson evidence against Willingham as false. Current and former Navarro County prosecutors were not aware that Jackson had reduced Webb’s conviction for robbery in the first degree to robbery in the second degree based on cooperation in the Willingham case. If the plea deal between Jackson and Webb had not been hidden by Jackson prior to the execution, the prosecutor assigned to the case now says that he would have disclosed it.

 

“Death by Fire 2” includes an exclusive on-camera interview with Webb.

 


Watch the full episodes

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Learn more about Cameron Todd Willingham

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