Todd Willingham in 2004

“I lied on the man (Willingham) because I was being forced by John Jackson to do so,” Webb said, according to the Marshall Project. “I succumbed to pressure when I shouldn’t have. In the end, I was told, ‘You’re either going to get a life sentence or you’re going to testify.’ He coerced me to do it,” Webb said in the interview.

Read the full Washington Post article by @MauricePossley.

Then, of course, the ex-prosecutor John H. Jackson makes a headline saying everything he did was proper. Side-stepping the debunked fire non-science used against Willingham, Jackson takes the high prosecutor’s road saying that it had no affect on the trial’s outcome. “His guilt was overwhelming.” He also has a few things to say about the jail house snitch he used.

The writer calls Willingham, a “pawn” of those investigating wrongful convictions and executions versus contra prosecutorial objections. As if we haven’t heard that one before. The Registry of Exonerations registers over 1500 such “pawns.”.

All contribs by bad forensic science are “fictional,” according to naysayers. Maybe these examples of injustice are just collateral damage to otherwise splendid science and jurisprudence?