[bloodrayne]

A Final Appeal

By January 2004, Willingham's appellate lawyer had all but given up hope. Willingham was scheduled to be executed on Feb. 17, and Walter Reaves knew that in Texas, stays are rarely granted.

Then Pat Cox, one of Willingham's cousins, called Reaves.

Cox, a retired nurse who lives in Ardmore, Okla., had seen Gerald Hurst on television and thought he could help save Willingham.

Hurst first went to court in 1972 as a prosecution witness in an Oklahoma bombing case. For the next 20 years, his work was primarily in civil lawsuits.

Ten years ago, a Texas lawyer asked for his advice on an arson case, and Hurst said he saw that "the level of expertise in criminal cases was far below what I was used to seeing in civil cases."

Cox appealed to Hurst and he reviewed Vasquez's report at no cost. He concluded it was riddled with "critical errors in interpreting the evidence." But, he added, the mistakes were not malicious; they simply reflected the state of fire science at the time.

He went on in the report to systematically dismiss all the indicators Fogg and Vasquez cited as proof of arson.

For example, Vasquez's claim that "brown rings" found on the concrete front porch were evidence of an accelerant was, Hurst wrote, "baseless speculation ... when the puddles of fire-hose water evaporate, they often leave brown material trapped in the surface."

Hurst ridiculed testimony that burn marks found under carpet tiles were proof of an accelerant. "A liquid accelerant will not burn underneath a tile on the floor any more than it will underneath an aluminum threshold," he wrote.

Vasquez testified that fire was started in three separate places, but Hurst said that because flashover had occurred, "all the burn areas were clearly contiguous. ... joined by obvious [heat] radiation."

According to Hurst's report, "most of the conclusions reached by the fire marshal would be considered invalid in light of current knowledge."

Four days before the scheduled execution, Reaves attached Hurst's report to a petition seeking relief from Texas' highest court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and from the governor.

"I didn't see any way the court was going to deny us a hearing on it," Reaves said. "No one could in good conscience go forward with that evidence."

The response from local prosecutors included a two-paragraph affidavit from Ronnie Kuykendall, the brother of Willingham's former wife. He said that Stacy, who had divorced Willingham while he was on Death Row, had recently visited him, then gathered the family to say that he had confessed.

But she said in an interview that was untrue. At the time of the trial, she said she had believed in her husband's innocence, but over the years, after studying the evidence and the trial testimony, she became convinced he was guilty.

In their final meeting, however, he did not confess, she told the Tribune.

Prosecutors also said the Hurst report, even if true, did not amount to what the courts call newly discovered evidence. They said that Willingham's attorneys should have been able to present the argument years earlier.

The courts and Gov. Rick Perry declined to halt the execution.

`He knew it was too late'

On the day of Willingham's execution, his father and step-mother, Gene and Eugenia Willingham, spent four hours with him, then said their goodbyes.

"He didn't want us worrying over him," his father said. "He said he'd be OK."

Though their son had earlier found hope in Hurst's report, he was realistic.

"He knew it was too late," Eugenia Willingham said. "He said, `I'm going.'"

At 6 p.m., Willingham was brought to the death chamber at the prison at Huntsville. In a final statement, he avowed his innocence, said goodbye to friends and hurled expletives at his former wife, who had come to witness the execution.

That night, the Willinghams drove back home to Ardmore, Okla. Gene Willingham said he did not want to be in Texas anymore.

"Texas says they don't kill innocent people," he said. "But they sure killed an innocent person with him."

After the execution, Pat Cox, Willingham's cousin, said she got a call from a lawyer in the governor's office. He told Cox what she already knew: that Perry had refused to grant a stay.

Then, Cox said, "he gave everybody in the family his condolences."