Perry Had Arson Expert Report Before Denying Stay to Willingham

The Houston Chronicle reports this morning that Gov. Rick Perry received a five-page report from arson expert Gerald Hurst that called into question the evidence against Cameron Todd Willingham. Perry denied the stay, and Willingham was executed 88 minutes after Perry received the faxed report, the Chronicle reported.

The Chronicle received the memo in answer to an open-records request. The revelation goes a long way toward explaining why Perry wanted to halt a public hearing of the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Open testimony about Perry’s knowledge of the disputed evidence raises serious questions. Perry might well be the first governor in the U.S. to have presided over the execution of an innocent man. Here’s how the Chronicle described the report:

The five-page opinion faxed to Perry’s office on Willingham’s execution day in 2004 was the first. It said investigators made “major errors” and relied on discredited techniques akin to an “old wives tale.”

It was authored by Dr. Gerald Hurst, an Austin-based arson expert who holds a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge University.

By 2004, Hurst already had received national media coverage for helping to obtain a string of high-profile exonerations by debunking arson evidence in other criminal cases. Hurst said in an interview that his previous analysis of flaws in another Texas arson-murder case had helped prompt the Board of Pardons and Paroles in 1998 to free a woman convicted of setting a fire that killed her infant son. She had served six years of a 99-year sentence.

Breaking gubernatorial precedent, Perry refused to release other documents that might show whether or not he or his staff read the arson investigator’s report.

In a letter sent Feb. 14, three days before Willingham was scheduled to die, Perry had been asked to postpone the execution. The condemned man’s attorney argued that the newly obtained expert evidence showed Willingham had not set the house fire that killed his daughters, 2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron, two days before Christmas in 1991.

On Feb. 17, the day of the execution, Perry’s office got the five-page faxed report at 4:52 p.m., according to documents the Houston Chronicle obtained in response to a public records request.

But it’s unclear from the records whether he read it that day. Perry’s office has declined to release any of his or his staff’s comments or analysis of the reprieve request.

A statement from Perry spokesman Chris Cutrone, sent to the Chronicle late Friday, said that “given the brevity of (the) report and the general counsel’s familiarity with all the other facts in the case, there was ample time for the general counsel to read and analyze the report and to brief the governor on its content.”

A few minutes after 5 p.m., defense lawyer Walter M. Reaves Jr. said he received word that the governor would not intervene. At 6:20 p.m. Willingham was executed after declaring: “I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit.”

Summaries of gubernatorial reviews of execution cases previously were released as public records in Texas, most recently under former Gov. George W. Bush. Yet Perry’s office has taken the position that any documents showing his own review and staff discussion of the Willingham case are not public — a claim the Chronicle disputes.

In a last-minute move week before last, Perry refused to reappoint three of his four appointments to the nine-member Forensic Science Commission. Perry’s action scuttled a hearing on the Willingham investigation. It is unclear whether the commission will continue its investigation, although the new chairman, John Bradley, says it’s a matter of when, not if.

Willingham was executed in 2004 in connection with the deaths of his three daughters. He was convicted of setting fire to their home, but subsequent reviews of the evidence indicates the fire was not arson.