Liliana Segura, Playing With Fire: How Junk Science Sent Claude Garrett to Prison for Life. The Intercept, 24 February 2015. “Just before dawn, on the unseasonably warm morning of February 24, 1992, a small house caught fire in Old Hickory, Tennessee, a few miles northeast of Nashville. The one-story cinderblock home, located at 114 Broadway Street, in a low-income neighborhood called Hopewell, was shared by 35-year-old Claude Francis Garrett and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Lorie Lee Lance. Claude did construction jobs, and Lorie waited tables at the Uno’s Pizzeria while going to school part time. As the fire tore through the living room, devouring the furniture, smoke and flames rose rapidly behind the front windows, then burst through the door. Across the street, a dog started barking.”
February 24, 2015
Playing With Fire: How Junk Science Sent Claude Garrett to Prison for Life
February 24, 2015 Filed Under: Criminal Justice, Law, Science Tagged With: arson, arson research project, assistant district attorney general john zimmermann, cameron todd willingham, claude francis garrett, david grann, davidson county (tennessee), fire scientist gerald hurst, junk science, lorie lee lance, national academy of sciences, national fire protection association (nfpa) 921: guide for fire and explosion investigations, national registry of exonerations, special agent james f. cooper (alcohol tobacco and firearms-atf), veteran fire investigator stuart bayne, wrongful arson convictions