[/caption]UPDATE — Speaking at the Senate Criminal Justice Committee meeting this morning, chairman John Whitmire told John Bradly his desire for secrecy would be rejected. Transparent, public oversight key to responsible governing, Whitmire says.
After a few decades of covering government as a reporter, working in government as a staffer and working as a consultant to candidates and officeholders, I have yet to encounter a single circumstance in which decisions were improved by a secret meeting. Not one time.
Secret government meetings serve mostly to make those attending them feel more important than the people left outside.
So, it is disappointing that Williamson County prosecutor John Bradley, the new head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission — the agency gutted by Gov. Rick Perry on the eve of a public hearing into the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham — says right off the bat that he wants new rules that provide for secret investigations.
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, the new chairman of the Texas Forensic Science commission, says he will recommend, among other things at the Senate committee hearing, that during an ongoing investigation, the commission should be allowed to meet in private to discuss the matter being investigated and that reports to the commission on an investigation be withheld from public release until the commission concludes its deliberations.
“It’s not a good idea to conduct an investigation in a public forum,” Bradley says.
He wasn’t misquoted. He said much the same thing in an op-ed he authored that was printed by the Houston Chronicle:
While the commission’s work should remain ultimately transparent, the sensitive process of receiving a complaint, investigating that complaint, deliberating on a case and preparing a final report must be protected from interference and improper outside influence until a final report is issued. I have asked lawyers with the Attorney General’s Office, who have expertise in such matters, to advise the commission on how it can make improvements.
For good measure, Bradley added that the public should listen to no one but him and approved agency folk on matters like the controversial Willingham case:
However, pending the release of a final report by the commission, you should be skeptical of media reports, personal pronouncements and editorials on that case. Those with agendas separate from the advancement of forensic science have made exaggerated claims and drawn premature conclusions about the case.
I agree with Bradley about one thing. He says the Forensic Science Commission was not created to oversee “social issues” like capital punishment. He’s right. But it was the guy who appointed Bradley, Rick Perry, who tried to turn questions about Perry’s firing of the prior commissioners into a black and white debate about whether Willingham was guilty. The Commission was never going to rule on that. It was going to look at how the forensic evidence was pursued, collected and analyzed. Period.
Willingham was executed in 2004 in connection with a fire that killed his daughters. Experts now say the fire wasn’t arson, meaning Willingham was innocent. The Forensics Science Commission was looking only at the forensic evidence. On the eve of an experts report to the Commissoin, and expert who said the arson evidence was flawed, Perry fired the commissions and blocked the hearing.
There are legitimate reasons to keep some investigative matters private. Law enforcement, for instance, doesn’t need the tip off suspects that they are being investigated. But the Forensic Science Commission is supposed to be examining the examiners. They are public employees working with our tax dollars to try to improve the work of other public employees — crime labs, etc. — who are also working with our tax dollars.
Keeping secrets from the public officials are supposed to serve is a bad idea.
Senator John Whitmire’s Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hold a hearing today on the controversy surrounding the Commission.