television crime dramas sometimes portray forensic science as the last word in law enforcement. >> i think from tv, people may have the impression that the computers can make these type of identifications. and it just doesn't work that way at all. >> in real-life cases, what happens when forensics fail? >> everything really comes down to the person making that judgment and how often do they get it wrong? and it's turned out that they get it wrong a lot of times. >> ernest willis is sent to death row for murder by arson. is faulty fire science to blame? >> everything that they said was obsolete. a fire don't happen the way they say it happened.

>> in another case, riky jackson is convicted of a friend's brutal murder based on fingerprint evidence. but are the prints really his? >> they have used prints, judge jury and execution. that makes it a very dangerous science, doesn't it? >> just outside philadelphia, in upper darby, pennsylvania, homicide investigators arrive at the scene of a brutal murder. >> the scene was horrific. the victim was stabbed, strangled, there was a cord wrapped around the victim's neck. and that cord was attached to a white box-type fan which was laying over the victim's head. >> the victim, 38-year-old

restaurant worker alvin davis, hadn't been heard from since he made plans to meet friends eight days earlier and never showed up. davis's landlord discovered his body and called police. >> we got together and reviewed all the evidence that had been collected from the scene that day. which included a box fan amongst things. >> soon investigators discover a key piece of evidence on the fan. >> the actor during the course of the homicide obviously got blood on his hands and he transferred that blood on to objects as he handled them. >> smeared in blood on top of the window fan is what looks like part of a hand print. the partial print also called a latent print is collected from the fan for analysis. the detectives deduce that it must be the killer's. because there is no sign of a break-in, they also believe the killer may be someone davis knew. as the search for suspects begins, a 40-year-old west

philadelphia hairdresser named riky jackson receives the news of davis's murder. >> a very good friend of mine called to inform me that something was going on at alvin's home. and i asked -- told him, well, find out what it is. he called me back about a half hour later and said well it seems like he's been killed. >> jackson, a friend and occasional lover of the victim, immediately contacts police saying he wants to help out with the investigation. >> we had a really good relationship. he would talk to me about things he was going through. i knew his whereabouts. i knew where he hung out. >> riky jackson was someone who knew the victim, who had been to the apartment on a regular basis, and who at different times were intimate with the victim. >> i was just trying to offer up information, god forbid -- and i always say if something like that were to happen to me, i would hope my friends would do everything they could to solve it. >> over the next two weeks, jackson cooperates with

investigators and is questioned multiple times. he does not obtain legal counsel. during this time, he also supplies upper darby police with several ink sets of his fingerprints including a so-called major case print roll which records every inch of friction-rich skin on the fingers and palm. >> believe it or not, at first i thought that was kind of fun. you know, i'd never been finger printed before. and i had no problems with it. i had no past record so i didn't mind being fingerprinted. >> jackson's fingerprints and several others are sent to fingerprint examiner sergeant anthony paparo for comparison to the latent crime scene print. paparo has reviewed thousands of print-related cases in his career. he is often called upon to testify in court as an expert in the field. >> during the course of the investigation, over a two-week period i was given well over a dozen fingerprints to look at. i take all those fingerprints and i go through each one individually. >> it's an intricate process but

one that's proven successful to law enforcement professionals for decades. robert epstein is a federal public defender who has taken a special interest in the science of fingerprinting. >> i think from tv, people may have the impression that the computers can make these type of identifications. it just doesn't work that way at all. >> while computers can help identify a potential match, it's up to the fingerprint examiner to make an expert judgment. >> it's entirely dependent upon the human's perception and the human's ability to compare the print. >> it comes down to the experience of the investigator reviewing the prints to know the awesome power that he holds in his hands when he's reviewing fingerprints to know that his decision is going to make a determination what happens to that person. be it good or bad. >> using unique characteristics like ridges, dots, and bifurcations, an examiner compares the two prints and determines if they're from the same person.

because fingerprints are permanent and no two are exactly alike, fingerprint analysis has long been thought of as infallible. but that's not always the case. day 12 of the alvin davis murder investigation, police believe they've uncovered the identity of davis's killer. >> when the police began to do the fingerprint analysis, they were able to rule out several different suspects and after reviewing the fingerprint evidence and making a determination that they believed there was a match. >> sergeant paparo concludes that the partial print found at the murder scene shares several points of similarity with the prints of none other than the victim's friend, riky jackson. >> i did major case print rolls and spent another two days examining those prints and then going back and comparing them with everyone else to make sure that i had not misinterpreted anything, and then i made my identification. >> to be certain, paparo asks a fellow fingerprint examiner to

substantiate his findings. the colleague agrees it's a match. for the upper darby police, that's enough for an arrest. riky jackson is taken into custody and charged with first degree murder. >> the single piece of evidence that identified riky jackson as our suspect was the print evidence, both the fingerprint and a partial palm print. >> despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence against him, jackson maintains his innocence. >> it was kind of like having a bomb dropped on you. mentally, you kind of just go a little numb. i know i had nothing to hide. i wasn't even thinking i had nothing to hide. it just -- i'd never been through a situation like this. >> riky's father, richard jackson sr., can't bring himself to believe that his own son is a murderer. >> the first call i received was from riky. when he explained to me what was going on, i asked him.

son, did you do this? and he said no. >> they already told me at the police station that they had my fingerprints in blood through the whole thing. i was thinking, oh, tomorrow it will blow over. they will figure it out. >> we arrived at the police a station. at least three people came into the room with the prints. and explained that they were no one else's prints but riky's. and i said to them, my son said he did not commit this crime. so i'll just have to prove you wrong. >> unable to pay the $500,000 bail, jackson is sent to delaware county jail to await trial. >> i'll never forget the feeling of when they put me in a cell on the second tier and closed the gate, and i've never been claustrophobic in my life. that's when it hit. >> as his son sits in jail,

richard jackson hires veteran defense attorney michael malloy. malloy is convinced the team has a tough battle ahead if police have something as solid as fingerprint evidence. >> i probably told them, i can fight like hell for you but i've got to tell you if they're your son's fingerprints in blood on the fan on top of the body, you've got a problem on your hands. >> coming up, can the jackson team take on a time-tested forensic science and win? >> there's no doubt about what we needed to do. you got prints, prove them wrong, you're out of business.

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riky jackson sits in jail, awaiting trial for the murder of his friend alvin davis.

davis was brutally stabbed and strangled to death in his home. police in upper darby, pennsylvania, have matched fingerprints at the crime scene to riky jackson. in spite of this apparently conclusive evidence, jackson says he's innocent. >> what happened with my buddy alvin is still a shock to me because i don't think i run in those kind of circles. i was still kind of in disbelief and still thinking, oh, it will blow over. only because i knew i hadn't done it. >> to defense attorney michael malloy, something doesn't seem quite right. >> there's no other evidence. i don't think they had anything other than this fingerprints. >> there's no confession. no eyewitnesses and there doesn't seem to be a motive. malloy decides to investigate the forensics of the case a little deeper. >> if you cut through it all, it's going to rise or fall on the fingerprints. i told the jacksons they needed to get a fingerprint expert. i felt since it was a significant part of the case, they really needed to get a qualified person. >> there's no doubt about what we needed to do.

it was prints. you got prints, prove them wrong, you're out of business. >> malloy reaches out to retired fbi fingerprint examiner george wynn. wynn has 48 years of experience in fingerprint identification and is known for having success with difficult cases. >> i asked and received photographs of the latent prints from the fan and fingerprints of richard jackson. >> from his virginia lab, wynn carefully analyzes the evidence, comparing characteristics on the bloody partial crime scene print with those of jackson's ink set. >> my initial reaction was that i had been given the wrong photographs, perhaps to a different situation. >> as he compares the two sets of prints, wynn can hardly believe his eyes. he is unable to find even one characteristic in common between

them. >> i knew within two to three minutes after i looked at these prints that they had been erroneously identified. >> wynn is astonished his conclusion is so different from the one made by police, but before he breaks the news to jackson's legal team, he decides to get a second opinion from his friend and fellow retired fbi fingerprint examiner vernon mccloud. >> this is suspected to be. >> mccloud reviews the evidence and is just as baffled as wynn. he too thinks he must have been given the wrong set of prints. >> i said, george, are you joking with me? give me the real prints. this is not him. this doesn't belong to this individual. you have to have sufficient number of characteristics in relationship one to the other on both prints to make the identification, and i found none. >> while the police found multiple points of similarity

between riky jackson's print and the latent crime scene print, wynn and mccloud now agree there are no matching characteristics. they both feel certain that a mistake has been made. with only days to go until jackson's trial, george wynn reports back to michael malloy that the prints don't match. malloy, still absorbing the good news, meets with his client. >> i said to him, well, riky, i have good news for you. our fingerprint guy said they're not your prints. he looks at me and said i told you they're not my prints. >> it's just the ammunition the jackson team feels it needs to win at trial. the riky jackson murder trial begins. jackson has now been in jail for nearly a year. in opening arguments, the defense drops its bombshell. they have proof that riky jackson's fingerprints were mistakenly identified by the upper darby police department. >> we did not know until opening

statements which avenue of the forensic evidence that the defense would challenge. >> sergeant anthony paparo spends three days on the stand testifying for the state about his identification methods and findings. >> the judge permitted me to come down off the witness stand with my chart and stand in front of the jury. i'm showing the points and doing the unit relationship to show everyone sitting there. i went through painstakingly how i eliminated individuals, how i could not eliminate individuals and visually showed the jury how the identification was made. >> for the defense, wynn and mccloud say just the opposite. they both testify that police misidentified riky jackson's prints. >> as i recall saying in the trial, as fingerprints go, these prints weren't even in the ballpark. >> paparo believes the defense experts must be looking at incomplete evidence. >> i knew from listening to

their testimony that they hadn't looked at everything that i looked at. >> my reaction to that statement is he's totally wrong. the prints that we had that i had of riky jackson were more than adequate to deal with those latent prints. >> as riky jackson's fate hangs in the balance, each side argues that its interpretation of the forensics is correct. >> i think as each of the different examiners looked at it, each of them came up with certain points that they felt either matched or were unexplainable differences which would lead them to conclude that it was definitely not a match. >> you have rarely seen in the fingerprint field a battle of fingerprint experts where you can actually get a retired law enforcement examiner who's going to disagree on record with an identification that's being made by law enforcement, but this was a case where you actually had that. >> it's up to a jury to decide which expert they think is correct.

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the murder trial of riky jackson is drawing to a close. the prosecution says jackson's fingerprints match the ones police found at the crime scene. but experts for the defense say they're not even close. now the verdict is in. the jury finds jackson guilty of first degree murder on september 24th, 1998. he is then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. >> when they said guilty, that whole out of body experience thing had kicked in. >> jackson's family and legal team are devastated. >> out of nowhere, we did not see it coming. we did not know it was going to happen. >> when it came in guilty, family's devastated.

i'm stunned, disappointed. >> undaunted, jackson's defense team pledges to continue challenging the evidence until riky jackson is free. >> we did everything we could do. we wrote to everybody, trying to get somebody's attention. i had filed motions immediately after trial asking that it be sent to the fbi. >> while malloy petitions the fbi to take a closer look, defense experts george wynn and vernon mccloud file a joint complaint with the international association for identification, or the iai. >> i knew without any doubt at all that this was wrong. these prints didn't match. this was an injustice. and i could not in all good conscience just walk away and leave it. >> the iai has several experts review the prints. they come to the same conclusion as wynn and mccloud.

>> i understand that they had fingerprint examiners in the iai examine these prints, and they didn't find any identification either. >> hoping the debate can be settled once and for all, the district attorney's office agrees to send the full fingerprint evidence to the fbi. >> we agreed that the best way to get to justice would be to have the evidence submitted to another agency that could look at it and give us an opinion. >> soon, the fbi has its decision. and the news couldn't be better for the defense. >> well, the fbi came back and said they don't match. >> these are not a match, period. >> i was devastated. and the first words that came out of my mouth was i want a meeting with the fbi. i want to show them what i did, i want to show them how i came to my conclusion and i want them to help me learn if i made a mistake. >> the fbi does agree to a meeting with paparo and stays firm in its decision. >> based on the fbi's

determination, a delaware county judge grants riky jackson a new trial. he sets jackson's bail at $1. that same night, riky jackson's family arrives at the prison to take him home. he has been behind bars for more than two years. unable to access a telephone that day, jackson is completely unaware that his parents are just outside and that he's about to be freed. >> the guards came in and said jackson, pack your stuff. and that's the night when they freed me. >> it was jubilation. it was very colorful because when we arrived at the prison, a lot of the media was there. and we were so happy. it was a great moment. >> it just feels so good to be out right now, there's no room for bitterness. it's sad that this could happen to anybody. >> jackson spends his first

night at home in over two years. >> i do feel a lot of disappointment for -- from the criminal justice system. >> in march of 2000, the delaware county district attorney's office formally withdraws the case against riky jackson, citing insufficient evidence. this means jackson will not be retried for the crime. >> we decided here that the fingerprint evidence was sufficiently in question that we no longer could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant is the one who committed this crime. >> the upper darby police department and paparo still stand by the accuracy of his identification. to date, the alvin davis murder remains unsolved. >> the real story is alvin davis and his family. they have no closure. it's still an open case for them. it's still an open case for me. never lose sight of the job. i don't let it affect me or make me second-guess things now. >> today, riky jackson's life is

slowly getting back to normal. he works as a hairdresser and lives near his parents in a quiet superb outside philadelphia. >> it's either going to tear you apart or bring you together. and if you're a strong family unit like we are, you know, like i said he only asked me once did i do it, and there was never a question. i said no. there was no conversation. it was on. and hasn't been a question since. >> the riky jackson case and others like it have caused legal experts like robert epstein to question just how reliable is fingerprint evidence. >> the riky jackson case was a case that really brought these problems to the light because we had a very, very clear case of misidentification where a poor fellow was incarcerated for two years on the basis of a misidentification for a horrible crime. if the system is going to work, it's got to catch the misidentifications before anybody gets arrested. >> they have used prints, judge

jury and executioner. that makes them god. and no one challenging it? that makes it a very dangerous science, doesn't it? coming up, fire ravages a west texas home, killing two women. did this man light the match or is faulty arson science to blame for his conviction? vietnam, 1967. i got mine in iraq, 2003. u.s.a.a. auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation, because it offers a superior level of protection and because u.s.a.a.'s commitment to serve the military, veterans, and their families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto insurance quote. u.s.a.a. we know what it means to serve.

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msnbc now. i'm alex witt. saif gadhafi has been captured trying to sneak out of lib. libya's prime minister promised a fair trial for him, calling his capture the crowning moment of the uprising. and the clock is ticking down for the super committee. the 12 members of congress have two days to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. i'm alex witt. more news later. we'll see you in one hour on

msnbc. it is early morning on a june day in the tiny texas town of iraan. 250 miles northwest of san antonio. inside a small tin-roofed house, a massive fire erupts. soaring flames begin consuming the structure within minutes. four people are inside. including 40-year-old oil field worker ernest ray willis and his cousin billy willis. elizabeth belue and another woman both in their mid 20s are also asleep in the house. the group are guests of the home tenants who are out for the night. following an evening of drinking, they've all decided to sleep over.

the flames awaken ernest willis. >> i woke up in the early morning hours, i don't know, 4:00 or so. and the house was on fire. so i ran through the house trying to get to the back bedroom. i couldn't get there. so i run out the front door and around the side of the house and started breaking the windows and yelling for everybody to get out. >> his cousin, billy willis, makes a last-minute escape leaping out a bedroom window to safety. the two women are still trapped inside. it's too late to save them. >> the local fire departments responded. upon arriving at the scene, they found two subjects outside the residence and that there was two subjects still left in the residence. the house was almost totally engulfed in flames. gale alison and elizabeth belue ended up dying as a result of the fire. as firefighters struggle to extinguish the flames, police on the scene interview ernest and billy willis. >> they questioned us,

questioned me, and then they questioned my cousin, just asking us what happened, you know. >> billy willis is visibly shaken and suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation and injuries from his fall. to investigators, his story about narrowly escaping the fire seems genuine, but police think the uninjured ernest willis seems suspiciously unaffected. they find him indifferent to the dead women, and although he claims to have run through the burning house trying to save them, there are no burns on his body. >> his story was not matching up with what happened at the residence. he was the only one in the residence that was still alive that couldn't explain exactly what happened. >> they said we were free to go. stood around and watched for a little while and then we left, and i thought it was all over with. >> but when the smoke clears, the charred remains and willis' behavior leave police in pecos county wondering what really happened that night.

for days after the fire, investigators combed through the scorched rubble for evidence of how the deadly blaze ignited. >> what the fire investigators saw when they first arrived is fire from the floor to the ceiling, charring on the floor. >> looking for so-called arson indicators, they search for any signs that the fire was intentionally set. soon, they find one. a dark outline that snakes through the length of the house. >> there was what we call a burn pattern in the house. which they did find. it went from the front door all the way to the dining room area, kitchen and into the back bedroom where one of the victims was. >> the burn pattern also called a pour pattern, is a sign to the investigators that someone has dispensed a flammable liquid along the floor and has ignited it. the investigators also find evidence of burning underneath the doors of the house. they believe it to be the result of an accelerant being poured on

the floor and then seeping under the thresholds. much of the furniture, including a large dining room table, has been reduced to piles of ashes. >> they thought that any fire intense enough to make a large heavy dining room table go away was more intense than a normal fire. >> after days of sifting through the home's remains, the investigators reach a conclusion. this fire was no accident. on top of the forensic evidence they've gathered, police believe that survivor ernest willis is lying about what really happened the night of the fire. >> he was the only likely person that could have put the accelerant on the floor and probably lit it and still gotten out of the house with what little bit of burns and stuff he had. >> a pecos county grand jury hands down an indictment. charging ernest willis with capital murder. if convicted, willis could face the death penalty. >> i received a phone call saying that they had a warrant

for my arrest for capital murder. i couldn't believe it. i thought, well, i'll go up there and get this all cleared up and go home, you know? i had nothing to hide. i mean, i knew i hadn't done anything. >> the case goes to trial in july of 1987. the state presents its strongest evidence. the so-called pour patterns. prosecutors argue that the patterns indicate the fire started within feet of where willis claims to have been sleeping. >> his story was that he was asleep on the couch. where the pour pattern stuff was, where the hottest flames and stuff were in the house, if he had been on the couch, he probably would not have been able to get out himself. >> prosecutors also play up to the jury the fact that willis seems cold and remorseless throughout the two-week trial. >> i sat there through my trial just motionless, in a daze. i didn't have any idea what all had went wrong. >> willis' court-appointed attorney who has never tried a

capital case does little to challenge the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution. >> there was no defense. i mean, he didn't even call character witnesses or anything. >> in fact, willis' own cousin billy testifies for the prosecution. >> my cousin didn't actually say that i done it. he said that he didn't know whether i did or not. you know. but he insinuated. >> the jury weighs all of the evidence. and reaches its verdict. ernest willis is guilty. a day later, a judge sentences willis to death by lethal injection. >> i was shocked. after i was found guilty, and i thought the legal system worked. and how fooled i was. you know, i had very little representation. >> willis says that after sentencing, his cousin billy told him that he felt pressured by authorities to testify against him.

from his cell on death row, ernest willis maintains his innocence. with the forensic evidence against him, the chances of anyone listening may be slim. coming up, is the same evidence that convicted ernest willis the key to releasing him from death row? advances in arson science provide a ray of hope for willis. >> everything that they said was obsolete. a fire don't happen the way they say it happens. that's logistics. ♪ ♪ medicine that can't wait legal briefs there by eight, ♪ ♪ that's logistics. ♪ ♪ freight for you, box for me box that keeps you healthy, ♪ ♪ that's logistics. ♪ ♪ saving time, cutting stress, when you use ups ♪ ♪ that's logistics. ♪

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ernest willis has spent almost two decades on texas's death row for murder by arson. 18 years ago, the house he was staying in with friends caught fire. killing two women. since the beginning, willis has maintained his innocence. in the years since his conviction, he has seen appeal after appeal be denied. he has also come dangerously close to execution. >> at one time, i come within two days of being executed. i had an execution date. after so many years, you just kind of almost lose hope, you know? >> yet, science could still be willis' salvation. in the decade following the verdict, dramatic advances in the fire investigation field have been made. >> a fire investigation had nothing to do with science for a long time. and until the early '90s, they

really didn't have much science. they had rules of thumb, old wives' tales. >> the national fire protection association went public with its first edition of standards for good fire investigation practices in 1992. many of the new standards contradict older methods of fire investigation. now experts are raising serious questions about arson convictions. >> there was a lot of people saying it was an art. you had to go in and feel the fire. and although you want to go in and try to feel the fire, you definitely need some science to back you up. if you look at an irregular pattern on the floor and say i believe that's caused by flammable liquid, you'd better have a positive laboratory sample. >> in the willis case, investigators never found any evidence of what accelerant might have been used to start the fire, and many of their conclusions were based on investigative practices that are now outdated. >> everything that they said was obsolete, you know, that a fire don't happen the way they say it happened.

>> finally, willis gets the break he's been waiting 17 long years for when one of his appeals pays off. in a highly unusual step, a u.s. district court judge orders the state of texas to either retry willis or dismiss his case. he cites several factors including ineffective assistance of counsel and evidence contradicting the state's theory of the fire. ori white heads up the investigation. white, a college student at the time of the crime, is now the pecos county district attorney. >> jurors want as much forensics in cases as they can get. and in this case, the forensics were such that it allowed the jury to reach that conclusion. >> now it's up to white and his team to decide if that jury reached the right conclusion. >> we began to do a brand new just from scratch reinvestigation of the case. a lot of it was based on the

forensics, the forensics aspect of the arson investigation. >> to help him, white hires an austin-based arson specialist and retired chemist named gerald hurst. hurst starts his investigation by examining the state's strongest evidence, the so-called pour patterns. >> without those patterns on the floor, no case would have ever been developed. >> based on the new science, there is a different explanation for the patterns the investigators found. it is not arson. >> what occurred between 1987 when he was tried and convicted and 2004 was a development in the science of arson. where suddenly, the pour patterns could be explained. >> as this fire investigation experiment demonstrates, accidental fires sometimes behave in ways that could lead fire investigators to believe arson is involved. over the course of several

minutes, this fire reaches temperatures so hot that it begins to burn down. >> radiation goes in all directions. including down. and when the temperature of that hot gas layer gets to about 1100 to 1200 degrees fahrenheit, it's got enough energy to ignite everything below it. every exposed surface catches on fire. >> the aftermath of a fire like this will often leave behind irregular burn patterns on the floor of a structure, much like the ones investigators found in the willis fire. >> you will find patterns in the room that look like you would imagine a floor and lower walls would look if they had been exposed to the fire from a liquid accelerant such as gasoline which had been poured. >> this phenomenon is known as flashover. it is called flashover because the fire gets so hot that it literally rolls over engulfing the entire room in flames. this is the moment that flashover occurs.

>> flashover produces patterns that cannot be discerned from those produced by liquid accelerants except that flashover does a better job than a liquid accelerant does. >> people have said, oh, the whole house caught fire from one end to the other in under five minutes. somebody must have poured gasoline. it's not true. you flash over one room and very quickly your house is involved. >> flashover could also explain the furniture being consumed. >> following a post flashover fire, what you expect to see is tables, chairs, couches, all of it reduced to charcoal. it is very common for fire investigators to work on the premise that the fire was too hot or too fast to be a natural fire. in other words, the idea that only an accelerant can generate

enough heat to destroy a heavy dining room table. >> but as this other fire investigation experiment shows, a gasoline fire only gives off large intense flames for around a minute. by the time a piece of furniture begins burning on its own, the gasoline will have already burned off. from that point on, the gasoline fire burns at around the same temperature as a normal fire would. what's more, if an accelerant had been used to start the willis fire, it would have taken an enormous amount to generate such a large pour pattern. >> the pour patterns indicated that somewhere in the vicinity of 25 to 30 gallons of accelerant such as gasoline was used to start this fire. >> white further concludes that willis may have been physically unable to start this fire. >> i had just had back surgery, back-to-back two weeks apart. i couldn't pick up five gallons of gasoline, much less carry it and spread it around a house. >> after an eight-week investigation, hurst and his colleague ken ryeland issue a

report to district attorney ori white. they conclude thhe a single item of psical evidence in this case which supports a finding of arson." >> the willis case is based solely on old wives tales that were disproved and should have been known by everybody in the industry. an amateur could have taken this case who had in his mind a one-page list of old wives tales, could have taken a checklist on the willis fire and said no, that's caused by flashover. no, that's caused by a flashover. accelerants can't do that and you wind up with nothing. >> there's one last thing. what about his so-called remorseless behavior during the trial? >> earnest willis is being given two powerful drugs during the trial which his defense council did not know about. >> according to medical records,

prisons did gave willis two powerful anti-psychotic medications during trial which would have altered his mental state. >> i was a zombie. juries look at defendants. they look at their eyes and they look at the way they respond to evidence that comes in. i believe the flat effect which was caused by these drugs certainly led the jury to believe that earnest ernest willis was a cold-blooded killer. >> coming up, will ernest willis earn his freedom after 17 years on death row? the evidence says yes, but will a judge agree? >> it's still unnerving because anything can happen. ♪ mama said there'd be days like this ♪ ♪ "there'll be days like this," mama said ♪ [ male announcer ] the toughest job on the planet just got a little easier. with one touch technology and even an air scrubber.

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>> 17 years ago ernest willis was sentenced to death for setting a fire that killed two women. now the fire pattern evidence used to convict him is being called into question. after re-opening the case and conducting his own investigation, pecos county, texas, district attorney ari white is ready to make his recommendation to a judge. >> not only this was not an intentionally set fire, but more likely it was an accidental fire, but there was some very serious evidence to suggest it could have been an electrical fire. >> based on this evidence and his other findings in the case, white calls for ernest willis to be released from prison without delay.

>> it was my duty to do justice. re-prosecution of mr. willis based on the sciences -- arts and sciences that exist today would be a waste of time. ernest willis did not do the crime. >> and soon, a judge agrees. judge brock jones signs willis' release order. he is the same judge who sentenced him to die 17 years earlier. a day later, willis walks off texas' death row for the first time in almost two decades, he is a free man. his wife verilynn whom he met is on death row is waiting for him outside the prison walls. up until this moment, they've only seen each other through a glass barrier. >> remember walking down the stairs and my wife was across the road talking to all of the reporters and stuff, you know? they got word. she seen me come out that door and she started rung. >> in the four years they've

been married, it is the very first time they've ever touched. >> it's undescribable. there's no way to tell. we've been married all these years and we've never touched or anything and we embraced and everybody said that -- that we just held each other for almost a minute. it's undescribable what you feel. >> she said, you want to go pack your stuff up? i said no, throw it all away. >> if it worked i wouldn't have spent 17 years on death row. >> ernest willis' journey leaves many wondering how many more cases like his are out there. >> i think the biggest lessons that anyone involved in criminal law can draw is that if there an

arson case that was investigated prior to the development of the science can question the reliability of those convictions. >> when we have an exoneration whether it's through dna or through people coming to their senses about arson and somebody let out of prison that's been in there for 17 years, that's the judicial equivalent of a train wreck. >> another texas man, cameron todd willingham was convicted of arson using the same fire investigation techniques that center nest willis to death row. based on an independent invest gagd, fire analyst john lantini and others in the field strongly believe the willingham fire was accidental. >> unlike willis, ilingham never got a chance to successfully challenge the science used to convict him. he was executed eight months before willis' release. >> once the death sentence is executed that person is gone. there's no way to unring that

bell and that person is gone and if justice is not done in those cases then we need to find out sooner rather than later. >> ernest willis was later declared actually innocent and was awarded nearly $430,000 from the state for his time spent on death row. he's enjoying his new found freedom and living with his wife and their extended career and his career as a truck driver allows him to see the country. >> i have a transport business. i transport bikes all over the united states my wife and i. >> we're the owners and drivers. >> i look back on it, i don't know whether i could go through it it again, if i had to or not under the same circumstances, i don't think i can do it. it's hard. it's rough. you've got to let that stuff go an m