Stung by criticism of his handling of the Cameron Todd Willingham execution, Gov. Rick Perry has begun to try Willingham again in the press. Governor, Willingham is not on trial. He’s dead and can’t be retried. It’s your actions that are on trial.
Perry will want to further politicize this matter in hopes of burying the truth in a prisoner’s grave. It won’t work, Rick. Man up. Let all the facts be known.
As criticism has mounted around the nation and world, it was only a matter of time before Perry began to tell us what a bad man Willingham was, hoping that will trump the evidence against Perry.
The governor’s engaged in an aggressive cover-up of his administration’s handling of the Willingham case. He scuttled the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigation by replacing his appointees at the last minute. He refused to make public memos, emails and other documents related to the case. Forensics experts say the evidence against Willingham was flawed, that the fire in which his children perished wasn’t even arson. They believe he was innocent of the crime for which he was executed.
Earlier this week, Perry’s opponents in the GOP gubernatorial primary criticized him for his handling of Willingham case. Perry’s spokesperson, Allison Castle, fired back with an attack on Willingham. Because it’s intellectually dishonest, it is very predictable behavior from Perry.
Willingham was no angel, but I think the law doesn’t provide the death penalty for those who are not angels. I haven’t seen the flawed forensic evidence. I didn’t hear the testimony. I wasn’t at Willingham’s trial. I have heard what the experts say. I have heard Perry mock them publicly. I know that Willingham’s past actions, whatever they were, were not capital offenses.
Perry will try to make this an issue about the anything but his own actions. We can’t bring Willingham back from the dead. We can hold officials accountable who may have executed an innocent man. We can demand openness and transparency in government.
The state forensics commission was not re-trying Willingham. It was not debating the death penalty. It was looking into forensics errors of the past in hopes that they won’t be made again in the future. It was, that is, until Perry decided that he might be embarrassed by the hearing, by the testimony of experts, by the actions of his office when it received an arson expert’s opinion before the governor denied Willingham a stay of execution.
That brings up another dishonest dodge in Perry’s defense of himself. He wasn’t asked to pardon Willingham back in 2004. He was asked to stay the execution so the evidence against Willingham could be examined more closely. He shouldn’t try to argue today that his choice was to set Willingham free or let him be executed.
Death penalty advocates ought to want all the facts made public in the Willingham case. Prosecutors can’t possibly want a dark cloud hanging over the criminal justice system. Doubt is their opponent, and they should want the public to know the state does everything in its power to ensure justice. Right now, it appears that in the Rick Perry era, the state does everything it can to ensure the opposite.