Submission + - 'MythBusters' Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence (innocenceproject.org)
Sleeping Kirby writes: Detective Switski also threatened John, telling him he would face the death penalty and end up “laying next to” his late father. Eventually, John couldn’t take it anymore and agreed to give a confession that was completely fabricated by the detectives to end the abuse.
The statement claimed that John, Mr. Almendarez, and Francisco Nanez (Mr. Almendarez’s brother-in-law) had started the fire by throwing a bottle filled with gasoline at the building and then tossing a cigarette into the pool of gasoline on the porch to ignite it.
John, Mr. Almendarez, and Mr. Nanez — 18, 20, and 22, respectively at the time — were all convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In his cell, a 39-year-old John watched as the hosts of MythBusters struggled repeatedly to ignite a pool of gasoline with a lit cigarette, despite fervent attempts. Based on the ignition temperature of gasoline and the temperature range of a lit cigarette, the show’s hosts had initially hypothesized that a lit cigarette might be able to ignite spilled gasoline as they had seen on TV and in movies. But after several failed attempts to start a fire, including rolling a lit cigarette directly into a pool of gasoline, the team determined it was highly unlikely that dropping a cigarette into gasoline could cause a fire.
The statement claimed that John, Mr. Almendarez, and Francisco Nanez (Mr. Almendarez’s brother-in-law) had started the fire by throwing a bottle filled with gasoline at the building and then tossing a cigarette into the pool of gasoline on the porch to ignite it.
John, Mr. Almendarez, and Mr. Nanez — 18, 20, and 22, respectively at the time — were all convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In his cell, a 39-year-old John watched as the hosts of MythBusters struggled repeatedly to ignite a pool of gasoline with a lit cigarette, despite fervent attempts. Based on the ignition temperature of gasoline and the temperature range of a lit cigarette, the show’s hosts had initially hypothesized that a lit cigarette might be able to ignite spilled gasoline as they had seen on TV and in movies. But after several failed attempts to start a fire, including rolling a lit cigarette directly into a pool of gasoline, the team determined it was highly unlikely that dropping a cigarette into gasoline could cause a fire.
