In The New Yorker, David Grann has a long article about Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texan who was put to death in 2004 for, the court said, starting a fire which killed his three daughters. Since then, an awful lot of experts have suggested that the investigation and trial were flawed and that Willingham may have been right when, just before his execution, he insisted for the eight zillionth time that he was an innocent man.
Lately, there doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to argue that he was guilty. But there do seem to be folks who don't want this matter to be investigated too much because — well, you know — it might cast some negative light on the way the Death Penalty is administered in Texas. And we can't have a little thing like executing the innocent get in the way of stringing up folks we think deserve to die.