arson
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2015 Has Been an Ugly Year for the Treatment of Muslims in Texas
We’re not even a quarter of the way through 2015 yet, and mosques have been burned, loyalty oaths have been demanded, and—in Dallas last week—a Muslim man was shot in the back while watching the snow fall.
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State Fire Marshal Attempts To Get Arson Evidence Reviewed; West Texas DA Attempts To Stop Him
Cameron Todd Willingham became famous in death after the arson science used to convict him of murder and send him to death row wasdebunked. The debunking came in 2009 when the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigation concluded that “a finding of arson could not be sustained” in his case. But Willingham’s conviction is not the …
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Church Burners
Why did Jason Bourque and Daniel McAllister, two Baptist boys from East Texas, set fire to ten churches across three counties last year?
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A Q&A With Pamela Colloff
The executive editor, who wrote this month's story about the East Texas church fires, on getting subjects to talk, interviewing people behind bars, and defining turning points.
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Separated At Death
Ernest Willis spent seventeen years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. And he has a few things to say about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for a strangely similar crime that many experts believe he didn’t commit either.
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The Cover-Up
It’s not hard to figure out why Governor Perry removed the chairman and two members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission just before its scheduled meeting: He was about to be embarrassed, and not just in Texas but nationally. The commission was going to hear a report from an arson expert that the investigation leading …
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The Arsonist Wins
I can’t believe what I read in the clips this morning. The Senate doesn’t want to come up with $27 million to restore the 1856 Governor’s Mansion, one of the oldest surviving buildings west of the Mississippi. Have they lost their minds? What’s the alternative? Leave it as a charred hulk, a monument to DPS’s …
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The Unusual Suspects
The arson of the Governor’s Mansion in June was as mystifying as it was heartbreaking. Could Austin anarchists have been to blame?
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Tough Love Story
How tough should our response to juvenile crime be? No less tough than it is now—but no tougher either.
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Burning Down The Woods
In 1990 the state banned the use of dogs to hunt deer. Ever since, a rogue group of East Texas hunters has exacted a fiery revenge.