His biggest error was not finding an arson expert who would have disputed the state’s case. There were plenty around. Gerald Hurst, who wrote the 2004 report on the Willingham fire, lived in Texas and had been consulting on arson cases since 1972.

Martin also failed to use the 1992 edition of Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, the standard manual for scientific arson investigation, to vigorously attack the methods and conclusions of the arson investigators.

Martin also failed to point out how many of the neighbors and other witnesses to Willingham’s behavior during and after the fire changed their testimony from the original police statements to make it incriminate Willingham at trial.

Martin failed to mention in the closing arguments that Willingham loved his klds and had no motive to kill them. He should have held up a photo(s) of Willingham playing with one or more of his children. He also wasted a lot of time talking the Bible.

Martin bought in to the prosecutor’s theory that accelerant had been spread throughout the house, and came up with a bizarre alternative theory that the 2-year old spread oil from an oil lamp and then was playing with a lighter or matches and started the fire. That was stupid.

A much more reasonable theory was that the 2 year old dropped something close to the space heater, such as a blanket, and accidentally started the fire. The mother remembers the healer being on, and it was Dec. 23. Martin could have checked the weather report to see how cold it was.

Martin only called 2 witnesses for the defense, and the testimony of one of those was thrown out as hearsay. That was an inadequate defense.

No, what I take exception to is the first paragraph of Mr. Lentini’s comment, in which he suggests that Martin’s “experiment” proves some point. I should have said that. Oh, wait. I did.

No good comes from trying to grind an already sharp ax.

I think you are missing Mr. Lentini’s points. What he is saying here is what he and other arson experts have been saying for quite some time now. One cannot tell anything about so-called pour patterns by visual inspection because flashover can produce something that looks as if accelerant were used. I think Mr. Lentini knows independently that black swans exist, and so is correcting Mr. Martin, who thinks that they do not.

That lighter fluid and carpet creates those patterns proves only that lighter fluid and carpet in fires in the open create those patterns.

Your saying that it proves that other things burning inside a compartment make the same patterns is just as unscientific as Martin’s implying that it proves that only lighter fluid creates such patterns. Maybe more so. Martin sees a white swan, and concludes that all swans are white. You see a white swan as proof that black swans exist.