Ernest Willis | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1945 Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Died | January 7, 2021 (aged 75) Oakland, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Occupation | Oilfield worker |
| Known for | Being exonerated in 2004 after serving 17 years on death row |
| Spouse |
Verilyn Harbin (m. 2000) |
Ernest Ray Willis (August 17, 1945 – January 7, 2021) was an American man who spent 17 years on death row for an alleged double murder by arson before being exonerated in 2004.
Convicted of murder after two women died in a fire in his West Texas home, Willis was sentenced to death in 1987. In 1991, another death row inmate, David Martin Long, confessed to starting the fire, but it was determined that Long's confession could not be sufficiently corroborated to support a finding of Willis's innocence. However, subsequent interest in the case led to further investigations into the origin of the fire that cast doubt on the cause. New investigators concluded that the cause of the fire could not be determined.
In 2004, Willis's conviction was overturned and the charges against him were dismissed. Prosecutors concluded that although the fire may have been intentionally set, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Willis had been involved.
Willis was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Before he was 40 years old, he had been divorced several times, and he had back problems that prevented him from working and made him dependent on food stamps. He developed an addiction to pain medication, and he had three convictions for driving under the influence. Willis had moved to Odessa, Texas, to live with his cousin, Billy Willis. They later moved to the town of Iraan, Texas.
On the night of June 10, 1986, Willis and his cousin Billy came home with two women that they had met that day, Betsy Beleu and Gail Allison. Ernest Willis said that he awoke to the smell of smoke around 4:00 a.m. on June 11. The Willis cousins were able to make it out of the burning house, but the flames had pushed Willis back when he tried to rescue Beleu and Allison. Both women died in the fire. Police became suspicious of Ernest, and they arrested him four months later, charging him with murder.
Willis first raised the suspicions of police with his behavior at the scene of the fire and actions after the fire. He was smoking as firefighters extinguished the fire, he did not seem to have inhaled much smoke, and his feet were not burned as officers thought they would have been. Later, Willis failed a polygraph examination.
Willis said he was unable to enter the bedrooms due to the fire and smoke, and instead ran around the outside breaking windows in an attempt to help those still inside escape. However, broken glass was only found outside the house. No cinder marks were found on Willis's clothes, although there was a stain on the shoulder, which was identified as betadine, an antiseptic. Willis said he acquired the stain while running through the burning house.
On the day of the fire, Willis had no burn marks, no singed clothing, and no singed hair. Two days later, however, Willis showed a "very bad" burn mark on his shoulder to Sheriff Bruce Wilson. Several witnesses, including Wilson, testified that Willis had no such injury on the day of the fire. Wilson said there was "no way" he could have overlooked the burn mark when he personally examined Willis. A doctor who examined Willis hours after the fire testified that he had no respiratory problems and did not complain of any injuries.
A garden hose with its front portion cut off was found on the premises of the home. Witnesses stated that it was a newly purchased and previously intact garden hose. A smaller portion of the garden hose reeked with the smell of gasoline. Traces of gasoline were detected on the hose.
Arson investigators concluded that had anyone been sleeping on the sofa in the living room, as Willis had claimed, he would have been burned, potentially fatally.
No motive was found for why Willis would set the fire. Prosecutors were surprised when they were able to secure a capital murder indictment against him.
At trial, Willis appeared cold and emotionless, and prosecutors commented to the jury about his demeanor. Willis did not realize that his behavior was abnormal; after his arrest, for reasons that were unclear, he had been started on high doses of antipsychotic medication. These medications can be associated with an apathetic appearance. Willis was convicted of capital murder and sent to death row in August 1987.
In 1990, fellow death row inmate David Martin Long gave a three-hour confession to starting the fire in Iraan. He had been involved in some criminal activity with Billy Willis, and he said that he hated Billy. Long described how he drove to the house, what roads he took, and how long it took for him to get there. He also gave a detailed description of the house itself. Long said he saw Willis sleeping on the sofa, but did not wake him. He said he used a lighter to ignore some clothing draped over a piece of furniture in the living room.
Long's confession was recorded on video, but Long subsequently refused to testify in court on the matter. However, the confession generated new interest in the case among Willis's appeals lawyers, and they worked to confirm the information in Long's story. The crime scene evidence indicated that liquor such as Everclear and Wild Turkey could have been used as accelerants as Long claimed. Long seemed a plausible suspect because he had admitted to starting a mobile home fire in Bay City, Texas. That 1983 blaze resulted in the death of Long's former boss.
During an court hearing on Long's confession, an eyewitness to the fire, Amelia Fuentes, testified that she had seen a vehicle driving slowly past her house before officials arrived to respond to the fire. Fuentes said she had never seen the vehicle before, but when she told the police about, she was told to forget about it.
Willis met his wife, Verilyn Harbin, while he was on death row. Harbin was the sister of death row inmate Ricky McGinn, who in June 2000 had been the first Texas inmate to receive a stay of execution from governor George W. Bush. (Bush declined to halt 131 earlier executions during his tenure.) Willis and Harbin corresponded and later met at McGinn's insistence. McGinn was executed in September 2000, and Willis and Harbin were married a month after the execution.
As his appeals went by, Willis said that he became depressed and stopped exercising. Willis weighed 185 pounds when he went to prison, and his weight eventually reached 300 pounds.
After many years of trying to corroborate Long's story, his confession could not be fully supported by the evidence as to exclude Willis's involvement. However, the interest generated by the confession led to new investigations into the Willis case. In 2004, a U.S. district judge threw out the conviction, ruling that Willis had been unnecessarily drugged during his trial and that the state suppressed testimony from a psychologist who found that Willis was not dangerous to society. The judge also found that lawyers for Willis failed to present evidence showing that it would've been out of character for him to set the fire. For example, Willis once dove into a lake to save a boy from drowning.
Lawyers for Willis provided alternative explanations for other circumstantial evidence against him. As for why no glass was found inside the house, they claimed the windows of the house had two panels, and that the second layer prevented any glass from falling inside. As for the allegedly planted burn mark on Willis's shoulder, they presented evidence that blistering does not necessarily occur immediately as a result of thermal burning.
The Texas attorney general and the Pecos County district attorney declined to pursue the case further. Pecos County district attorney Ori White said that new investigators labeled the fire's cause as undetermined and could not find any evidence to substantiate an arson case. The only remaining evidence that the fire was an arson was Long's confession, although Long had said that he acted alone. White concluded that concluding that even if fire was intentionally set, Willis had not been involved.
Willis was released from prison in October 2004. He was the eighth Texas death row inmate exonerated since the state resumed executions in 1982, and he was thought to have served the longest sentence on death row among that group.
In 2005, Willis received $429,000 in compensation, plus a monthly annuity of $9,965.
After his release from prison, Willis and his wife moved to Mississippi, where they mostly kept a low profile. He started his own business hauling houses and boats across the United States. Willis considered writing a book about his experiences, but he never did so. Willis and his wife separated in 2007 and he moved to Midland, Texas. In 2012, when the family of executed Texas inmate Cameron Todd Willingham announced that they would attempt to have Willingham posthumously pardoned, Willis attended the press conference in Austin. By that time, he had gotten back together with his wife and was living in Mississippi again.
Willis died in Oakland, Mississippi on January 7, 2021.