Flawed Forensics in Arson Cases: One Executed, One on Death Row, Four in Prison
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
The question hangs like ugly morning moss from a large swamp oak tree: Did the State of Texas execute an innocent man when it put Cameron Todd Willingham to death on February 17, 2004? Just last month the Texas Forensic Science Commission ruled that Willingham’s August 1992 murder conviction was based on flawed forensic evidence. The Willingham case—and the way it has been handled by state officials and in particular Tex. Gov. Rick Perry and especially by Willingham’s former defense attorney—has proven to be a national and international embarrassment to the state’s criminal justice system.
And just as the Texas Forensic Science Commission is trying to undo some of the damage caused by the wrongful conviction and execution of Willingham, we learn that the State of Pennsylvania now finds itself in the peculiar position of having to deal with a death penalty case that mirrors the Willingham case. Like Willingham, Daniel Dougherty was an excessive drinker who abused his wife but loved his children—and like Willingham, Dougherty was forced to watch his two children (Danny 4 and Johnny 3) die in a fire that destroyed his home in 1985, according to a recent CNN report.
Today the 50-year-old Dougherty sits in a prison in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania—a prison that state officials told CNN’s Stephanie Chen houses “the worst of the worst”—awaiting execution. Although Willingham was arrested and indicted a little over a month after the December 1991 residential fire that took the lives of his three children, Dougherty was not arrested until 14 years after the fire that killed his two children and only after his estranged wife told the authorities he had “confessed” to her that he deliberately set the fatal fire.
Like Willingham, Daniel Dougherty has also maintained his innocence from the day of his arrest. His attorney claims that Dougherty, like Willingham, was convicted on the same kind of “flawed arson science” that sent the Texas inmate to the state’s death chamber. “We have an innocent man on death row who has been languishing there, and there is absolutely no evidence that a crime occurred,” Dougherty’s attorney, David Fryman, told CNN. “We’ve been trying our best to right that wrong.”
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