Get Smart's "Cone of Silence"

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.

Related Articles:

• Unequal Justice: Perry Admits Medina Role in Willingham Execution
• Geese and Gander: When Is An Arson Expert Legit?
• Whitmire to Call Senate Hearing on State Forensics Commission
• The Death Penalty as Political Gang Initiation
• Perry Terminates Board Members Investigating Execution

David Medina, Gov. Rick Perry’s general counsel when Perry denied a stay of execution to Cameron Todd Willingham, was later cleared of arson-related charges in the fire that destroyed his home. Medina is now on the Texas Supreme Court. His wife, Francisca, was cleared of arson charges based on an independent forensic and arson investigator’s report. The expert found the fire might have been accidental.

Willingham was convicted and sentenced to death for a fire that killed his three children. A report from an independent forensic and arson investigator sent to Perry and Medina 88 minutes before the execution said the fire was probably accidental. Perry and Medina ignored it as irrelevant. Perry has subsequently mocked independent scientists.

Now Perry has publicly admitted Medina’s role in the 2004 Willingham execution. There could be no greater or more tragic example of our unequal, two-tiered system of justice. I don’t know if the Medinas set the fire or not. I don’t know if Willingham was guilty, although all the independent experts say the fire wasn’t even arson, meaning no crime was committed.

What I do know is that a scientist’s report in the Medina case was given so much weight that the indictment was dismissed. In the Willingham case, such a report was not deemed important enough to delay an execution. Perry and Medina were not asked to pardon Willingham or find him not guilty. They were asked to wait a while before executing him. That’s all.

Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune, has listed the deceptions in Perry’s recent responses to the Willingham case:

Charge: On Thursday, officials in Corsicana, Texas, released a sworn affidavit from the brother of Willingham’s wife that he signed shortly before the execution. In it, he claims that Stacy Willingham told her family that her husband confessed to her before the execution.

Fact: In 2004, Stacy Willingham told the Tribune that Willingham never confessed. Earlier this year she told David Grann, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, that she stood by her statements. She came to believe that Willingham was guilty after she reviewed the case herself.

In addition, on the same day that Stacy Willingham’s brother claimed she told the family that Willingham had confessed, she spoke to the local newspaper, saying that during her last meeting with him, he maintained his innocence.

She did not mention a confession.

Charge: Perry has called the fire scientists and investigators who have reviewed the case “latter-day supposed experts.” He has suggested they were aligned with death penalty opponents. Both statements appear to be efforts to question their impartiality and their credentials.

Fact: The nine scientists and investigators involved, all of whom have found the original investigation flawed, have worked for both defense lawyers and prosecutors, as well as for attorneys in civil litigation. All are considered among the field’s leaders. Some are viewed as prosecution-oriented.

They have no vested interest in the outcome of the debate and are not active in the nation’s ongoing death penalty debate.

“My work was a scientific investigation,” said Craig Beyler, who investigated the case for the Texas Forensic Science Commission. “There’s no political agenda.”

Charge: Perry said recently that there was “clear and compelling, overwhelming evidence” of Willingham’s guilt. He has said more than a dozen courts rejected Willingham’s claims.

Fact: The heart of the case prosecutors brought against Willingham was that the fire was arson. Besides testimony from fire investigators, prosecutors offered a jail inmate who said Willingham told him he set the fire. The inmate, however, was a drug addict who was taking psychiatric medication at the time. Since the trial, he has hinted his testimony was false; even prosecutors have discounted his claims.

Willingham’s appeals did make their way through the state and federal courts, but his claim that the fire investigation was flawed was made just before his execution to a Texas court and a federal appeals court, as well as to the governor and the state’s parole board.

Charge: Perry has called Willingham a “monster.” The man who prosecuted him, John Jackson, suggested in a “Nightline” interview on ABC that Willingham was a devil-worshiper because he listened to heavy-metal music and had a band poster in the house.

Jackson also claimed fire patterns on the floor were in the shape of a pentagram to buttress his contention.

Fact: There is no evidence in court records to support claims that Willingham was involved in any such activities. Fire investigators made no references to the shape of burn patterns.

Related Articles:

• Geese and Gander: When Is An Arson Expert Legit?
• New Forensic Agency Head Bradley: Best to Meet in Secret
• Whitmire to Call Senate Hearing on State Forensics Commission
• The Death Penalty as Political Gang Initiation
• Perry Terminates Board Members Investigating Execution

Perry’s former general counsel, David Medina, and his wife Francisca have a different opinion of independent forensic experts, at least when it’s their skin that’s saved. They escaped criminal prosecution because of them.  Medina was Perry’s counsel in February, 2004, when the first of three experts faxed his report to the governor’s office questioning the Willingham evidence — 88 minutes before Willingham was killed. If read by Perry, Medina or other’s in Perry’s office, the report made no difference. Perry refused to stay the execution.

I think it’s safe to say that Perry and the Medinas are quite happy that the courts gave the experts hired by Francisca Medina’s attorneys more attention than Medina and Perry gave experts hired by the Texas State Forensic Commission or others who questioned the forensic evidence in the Willingham case. What’s good for the geese is good for the geese, gander be damned.

Here’s what Perry said about the independent experts who said there was no real evidence the fire that killed Willingham’s children was even arson, but was probably caused by faulty wiring:

Perry recently discounted the findings of a myriad of scientists, who in three separate reviews concluded that Willingham fire investigators relied on old, discredited indicators of arson – “wives’ tales,” as some called it. They said the fire might have been caused by a faulty space heater or bad wiring.

In an interview last month with The Dallas Morning News, Perry said, “I’m familiar with the latter-day supposed experts on the arson side of it,” and made quotation marks with his fingers to underscore his skepticism. He said the records he reviewed before allowing the execution showed “clear and compelling, overwhelming evidence that he was in fact the murderer of his children.”

Here’s what Medina attorney Dick Deguerin said about the arson experts who found that the 2007 Medina house fire could have been caused by faulty wiring:

Francisca Medina’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, says that last week he provided the DA’s office with a report prepared by independent fire experts who found that the evidence did not prove arson. “Our experts believe that it could not be called an arson fire,” DeGuerin says.

Steve Baldassano, the assistant DA handling the case since January, says his office didn’t have sufficient evidence to prove arson. “We couldn’t eliminate an electrical malfunction,” says Baldassano.

So, the Medina’s walked because of “latter day, supposed experts” Perry ridiculed. Obviously, if the experts are employed by the politically powerful their expertise must be considerably enhanced, otherwise Perry would have to ridicule the independent experts in the Medina case. That would require him to admit his appointee to the Texas Supreme Court might be a “monster,” as he called Willingham this week.

The parallel is incredible, really. The indictment against Francisca Medina was dismissed because independent experts said the fire could have been started by faulty wiring. Willingham was executed after Perry’s office rejected an independent expert who said the fire that killed the Willingham children was probably not arson, but caused by faulty wiring.

Perry’s outburst yesterday — he called Willingham a “monster” — is a good indicator that the issue has gotten to him. Conventional wisdom is that uninformed voters will take the controversy as a debate over the death penalty. Most Texans are far more discerning than that, however. Only the most dangerously unbalanced will say it doesn’t matter if an innocent man is killed. Those sick ones will probably vote for Perry, and the issue might help them with his base in his primary fight with U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

But it will hurt him in the long run. Why? Because his actions — obstructing an investigation by his own agency, keeping secret the Willingham paperwork, memos and emails, etc. — are building a good argument against the death penalty.  I think even tough-on-crime prosecutors recognize this. Perry is poisoning their jury pools. Most importantly, most Texans cringe at the prospect of the cavalier state murder of innocents. Of course.

Now it appears that the cover-up may be motivated, in part, by an effort to save Perry and Medina embarrassment. Those are the kinds of political missteps that get incumbents beat.

Related Articles:

• Unequal Justice: Perry Admits Medina Role in Willingham Execution
• New Forensic Agency Head Bradley: Best to Meet in Secret
• Whitmire to Call Senate Hearing on State Forensics Commission
• The Death Penalty as Political Gang Initiation
• Perry Terminates Board Members Investigating Execution

Cameron Todd Willingham

Little noted in the coverage of Rick Perry’s obstruction of a state investigation into the execution of a man experts say was innocent was Sen. John Whitmire’s statement that he would call a hearing by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee he chairs to look into the issue. According to the Houston Chronicle’s Rick Casey:

…Whitmire also said he will schedule a committee hearing in about a month to ask Bradley in what direction he plans to take the commission. One likely question, said Whitmire: Will Bradley reschedule the Willingham arson matter before the March primary?

That likely will [be] a laboratory test of the hypothesis that Perry appointed him as a political puppet.

Last week, Perry scuttled the Texas Forensic Science Commission hearing into the evidence that convicted Cameron Todd Willingham, scheduled for last Friday.  The governor, without warning,  replaced three of his four appointees to the nine-member commission. The commission had been scheduled to hear from nationally recognized arson expert Craig Beyler, who had issued a report in August questioning the evidence in the Willingham case. Beyler wrote:

The investigators [in Willingham's case] had poor understandings of fire science and failed to acknowledge or apply the contemporaneous understanding of the limitations of fire indicators. Their methodologies did not comport with the scientific method or the process of elimination.

Sen. Whitmire said he would bring Williamson County prosecutor John Bradley, Perry’s newly appointed Forensic Science Commission chairman, before his Senate committee. Craig Beyler should also testify, saying publicly what Perry stopped him from saying last week. A legislative committee shouldn’t pre-empt an executive branch function — even if it’s been obstructed by the governor.  But Beyler has already publicly issued his report. Legislators have a right to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Also somewhat lost in the outrage over Perry’s Nixonian action were statements from two of those let go from the Forensic Science Commission, Fort Worth prosecutor Alan Levy and Commission Chairman, Sam Bassett, an Austin lawyer. Neither man had prior knowledge that the axe was falling on their heads, and that raises further questions about Perry’s motives. Perry said his action was just “business as usual,” noting that the terms of the agency officials had expired. Operating under business as usual, their dismissals would not have been kept secret from them.

According to the San Antonio Express-News’ Scott Stroud, Basset was surprised.

Austin lawyer Sam Bassett got the call late Tuesday from Doris Scott, Gov. Rick Perry’s appointments manager.

“She said ‘Thanks for your service, he’s making new appointments to the commission and taking it in a new direction,’” Bassett recalled.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Alan Levy was just as surprised.

“His reasons for doing it, I have no idea,” said Levy, a chief prosecutor in the Tarrant D.A.’s criminal division who has sent numerous defendants to death row. “I feel like a jilted lover, except that he’s prettier than I am.”

“I’ve got my own thought, but I don’t have any way of knowing,” Levy said. “It’s just odd. I’ll assume that this was just part of the normal process; but if it was, it certainly wasn’t handled the way it should have been.”

Missing in action was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchiston, Perry’s GOP primary opponent. She’s made one weak statement, to the Dallas Morning News:

“Why you wouldn’t at least have the hearing that the former member suggested, to find out what the facts are, when a man has been executed and now the facts are in dispute – just like DNA has given more tools to determine the facts,” she said. “I am strongly for the death penalty, but always with the absolute assurance that you have the ability to be sure – with the technology that we have – that a person is guilty.”

Hutchison declined to say whether she believes Willingham was innocent.

“I answered your question,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge, I’ve answered your question.”

New Forensic Science Commission Chairman Bradly says he wants to get up to speed on the issue before deciding whether to reschedule the Willingham hearing. He can get up to speed very quickly if he’ll just read news coverage of the issue.

So far, that coverage has been extensive. Behind the scenes, however, some GOP types are working hard to spin down the issue. Texans support the death penalty, they say, and voters won’t care about this issue come March. Really? An innocent man is executed by the state, the sitting governor blocks an investigation of the tragedy, and voters won’t care?

The press has been aggressive so far in its coverage. Time takes its toll, though, and we’ll have to see if the intensity continues. Here is some other notable coverage.

From CNN:

The Forensic Science Commission began investigating the Willingham case in 2008, hiring Maryland fire investigation expert Craig Beyler to examine the evidence used to convince a jury the fire that killed Willingham’s three daughters was deliberately set. Levy said Thursday he told the governor’s office “that it would be disruptive to make the new appointments right now.”

“The commission was at a crucial point in the investigation,” he said. Asked about the future of the Willingham investigation, he said, “I don’t know if it will ever be heard.”

Levy, a top prosecutor in Fort Worth, Texas, said he had asked to remain on the commission, but received no response from the governor’s office. Sam Bassett, the panel’s former chairman, said he also asked to remain.

From the Texas Observer’s Bob Moser:

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now: Gov. Perry is unfit to make life-and-death decisions on behalf of the citizens of Texas. That’s one sad fact that surely has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

From the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board:

Gov. Rick Perry looks like a desperate man with his decision to jettison the chairman of the state’s forensic science panel.

The panel’s post-mortem look at the Cameron Todd Willingham arson-murder case goes to the heart of Texas justice – including the governor’s role in it – and whether an innocent man was railroaded into the death chamber at Huntsville.

Since Perry signed off on the Willingham execution in 2004, his own accountability is at stake. So perhaps it’s no surprise that two days before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was to proceed with the case this week, Perry replaced the chairman and set things back.

This has the stink of avoidance for political reasons. It sends the message – intentional or not – that the governor was displeased with the speed and direction of the inquiry…

…No, a painfully thorough look at the evidence is exactly what’s called for, with no more malodorous delays.

Dallas KRLD radio news talk host Scott Braddock interviewed Kerry Cook, who spent 13 years on death row before his conviction was overturned.

The Texas Observer’s Dave Mann, who’s groundbreaking work on bad arson science can be found here, here, and here, was interviewed by NPR’s Robert Siegel about the Willingham case.

Here’s the CNN news story:

Related Articles:

• New Forensic Agency Head Bradley: Best to Meet in Secret
• Unequal Justice: Perry Admits Medina Role in Willingham Execution
• Geese and Gander: When Is An Arson Expert Legit?
• The Death Penalty as Political Gang Initiation
• Perry Terminates Board Members Investigating Execution

Execution as gang initiation may have happened, but mostly it’s a recurring urban legend. Gang initiates are said to be cruising the streets with their headlights off, ready to assassinate passing motorists who flash their lights as a “turn-on-your-lights” courtesy. False warnings of random initiation killings in WalMarts seem to move faster than light.

Untrue as most of these stories are, there’s something in the national consciousness that makes us vulnerable to them. Whatever that something is, it also plays a role in real-life executions carried out by the state on behalf of its citizens  — us, whether or not we support the death penalty.

The 2004 Texas execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man experts say was innocent of the arson deaths of his three daughters (the fire that killed them wasn’t even arson) has brought capital punishment back to media prominence. Right-wingers, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who fired three board members of the state agency investigating Willingham’s execution, will want to reduce the case to a black-and-white shouting match over the death penalty.

The execution of an innocent man makes a profound, airtight argument against capital punishment. In this case, another question is whether political leaders charged with carrying out state executions should be held accountable when they kill the innocent. Willingham should not be turned into an empty political pawn. Perry and his right-wing allies will want to do that, and will try to obscure the facts of the tragedy behind an over-simplified defense of the death penalty.

As a reporter for the Houston Chronicle back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I covered the state prisons. I was a frequent visitor to Death Row, at that time home to around 125 condemned men. Today there are more than 330 awaiting death at the hands of the state.

Back in the ‘70s, the barber’s chair used to shave the hair of the condemned before electrocution stood in the corridor in front of the Death Row cells. It was a macabre reminder to inmates of the power of the state. But it was a relic; Texas law had already rejected electrocution in favor of lethal injection. Your head isn’t shaved before the needle.  I often sat in the steel and vinyl barber’s chair while waiting to talk with inmates. It was the only seat available.

There wasn’t one of these men I ever wanted to see go free. Some did. Vernon McManus was freed when a key witness refused to testify at his retrial. McManus was a muscled-up former college football coach whose trial I’d covered some years earlier. He did exercises on his cell bars while we talked, using his arm, back and leg strength to suspend his heavy body at an angle over the floor of his cell. He meant to intimidate. He did.

I never witnessed an execution. The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1972 that the death penalty was so unevenly and arbitrarily applied that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In 1973, Texas passed a new capital punishment statute to meet the Supreme Court standards.

Editors felt the prison beat was perfect training for covering politicians, and I was transferred to the state capitol in 1982. From Austin, I covered the behind-the-scenes, last-minute legal maneuverings before Texas’ first execution under the new law.  On a cold December morning, Pearl Harbor Day, 1982, Charlie Brooks was strapped to a hospital gurney, wheeled into the death chamber, and killed. From Fort Worth, Brooks, 30, was the first person in the world to be executed by lethal injection. He’d eaten a T-Bone steak for his last meal.

Mark White, who that November was elected governor of Texas, was attorney general. In a different kind of rite, he’d take his new oath of office one month later. One of his top assistants was Leslie Benitez, daughter of the Episcopal bishop of Texas. The attorney general represented the state, and he had to defend the laws of Texas as Brooks’ lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court for a last-minute stay. I was allowed into the work chambers of the attorney general’s team that dark night. Here’s how I described it in the Chronicle:

The legal proceedings which preceded Brooks’ execution were sterile and technical, but beneath the courtroom wars lay a time-hardened bedrock of emotion that centered on a question too complex for a ready answer: the worth of a life…

Arguing for the state of Texas and the constitutionality of the state’s capital murder law was 30-year-old Leslie Benitez…Leading the 11th-hour efforts to win a stay of Brooks’ execution was New York attorney Eric Freedman.

Ms. Benitez worked through the weekend, alone most of the time, in jeans and a sweatshirt, bent over stacks of legal briefs…Freedman worked out of a converted bathroom.

They fought over Brooks’ life from their separate offices, sending out their legal briefs by air courier and telephone, telecopier and errand boy.

There was little sleep.

Did Rick Perry and his team lose any sleep as they rejected Cameron Todd Willingham’s appeals? I doubt it. Instead, Perry seems to have given evidence of innocence little consideration. And, of course, he’s slammed the door on the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigation into the matter.

Today, state executions receive little news coverage. Many citizens, allowed to distance themselves from state killing, reach a kind of abstract comfort that vengeance has been taken on the cold-hearted murderers who perpetrated inhuman crimes.

Back in 1979, I asked George Beto, former Texas prison director and a Lutheran minister, whether a new film about life on Death Row would impact the debate over capital punishment. Beto shook his head. “As far as our criminal justice system is concerned, there is an invincible ignorance that exists among the general public.”

As I’ve written elsewhere, it is curious that right-wing defenders of the death penalty are willing to invest the state with such power even as they march in the streets to protest intrusive government.

Afraid of looking soft on crime, most politicians, whatever their private convictions, pass the national gang initiation test. Their calculation? “I can’t get elected if I oppose the death penalty, and that will stop all the good I might do once in office.”

Until the death penalty is repealed – and, if we are to call ourselves civilized, it should be – the very least those politicians can do is work with all their power to make certain only the guilty are killed.

Recently, Rick Perry dismissed several investigations that found Willingham innocent. “I’m familiar with the latter-day supposed experts on the arson side of it,” he said. As far as justice is concerned, an invincible ignorance exists in the heart of Perry and his kind.

Related Articles:

• New Forensic Agency Head Bradley: Best to Meet in Secret
• Unequal Justice: Perry Admits Medina Role in Willingham Execution
• Geese and Gander: When Is An Arson Expert Legit?
• Whitmire to Call Senate Hearing on State Forensics Commission
• Perry Terminates Board Members Investigating Execution

“Business as usual,” Perry told the Associated Press the firings were “business as usual.” No kidding. Last time it was just some university regents who no longer supported him. This time it was a group of people investigating whether Perry’s government killed an innocent man.

This time it involves members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigating whether the State – let me emphasize this for Perry’s teabagger friends who rail about intrusive government – whether the State killed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was convicted in the arson deaths of his three infant daughters. Killed by lethal injection, Willingham professed his innocence until the end. Perry denied a stay of execution, another way of saying the governor ordered the death of Willingham.

Three independent reviews  say the deadly fire was not deliberately set. It wasn’t arson. Willingham was innocent. The most recent expert to criticize the original investigation, nationally recognized authority Craig Beyler, was scheduled to speak to a public meeting of the Forensic Commission on Friday.

So Perry fired the commissioners, and the meeting’s been cancelled. Perry no doubt feels like a little death penalty squabble will fire up his right wing base. His Republican opponent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, offered mild criticism of Perry, but stressed that she was a strong supporter of the death penalty. Such cowardice is business as usual with these two.

Here’s Perry’s thinking: His voters support the death penalty. Texans won’t learn enough about the details of the case to think it’s anything but an argument over the death penalty, and he’ll be on the right side of that argument. End of story. The great moral matters of innocence and death are reduced to insignificant little nothings. This is why it is deadly important that the press get the facts to voters.

Let me ask this question: Do we really want the State to take such a murderously cavalier and political approach to the killing of Texans? Many years ago, I covered Death Row as a reporter. Among the few sentenced to death at the time, there were none I ever wanted to see go free. However, investing the State – any state – with the power of death over its citizens seemed to me then and seems to me now a dangerous, democracy-threatening thing to do. Perry’s handling of the Willingham case proves the point.

Here’s how David Grann of the New Yorker described Beyler’s findings on the investigation that led to Willingham’s death.

In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire.

And here’s how the Dallas Morning News describes Perry’s actions:

This week, the governor chose not to extend the terms of Austin lawyer Sam Bassett, former chair of the commission, as well as two others on the nine-member Texas Forensic Science Commission. The new commission chair promptly cancelled Friday’s meeting on the Beyler report.

The Willingham case, in which his three young children died in a 1991 Corsicana house fire, has drawn national attention. Anti-death penalty advocates consider it the likeliest case in recent decades in which an innocent man was executed.

Perry had denied Willingham’s request for a stay of execution five years ago. His lawyers asked the governor for the 30-day reprieve to give the courts time to review new reports that called the fire investigation into question. Willingham had always maintained his innocence.

Next time, it might be someone you love who is wrongly accused. It might even be you. The debate over the death penalty will go on. Meanwhile, the actions of Rick Perry must be judged within the context of today’s law. In that context, Perry’s actions are morally repugnant. Perry ought to want to know the truth of the matter. The truth won’t hurt him politically and it might save his soul.

I have no doubt Perry will try to make this a debate about the death penalty. It is not. At the core, it should be a debate about the governor’s moral judgment. He could probably fight that debate to a draw by standing up now for the truth. Instead,  he’s managed to make the best argument to date for a moratorium on executions.

Hutchison’s weak statement on the matter serves her no better. Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Tom Schieffer was stronger, demanding today that the Forensics Commission reschedule the hearing Perry succeeding in obstructing.

Schieffer said, “No one in public life should ever be afraid of the truth. In the final analysis, truth is the only thing that serves justice.” Truth is damned important to justice in the initial analysis, too.

Perry was apparently acting within his legal authority when he refused to reappoint the Forensics Commission members. His action is obstruction of justice nonetheless.

Related Articles:

• Dog Day Afternoons: Kay and Rick On the Porch
• Perry: Texas Now All “Urbany”
• What? No Musical Chairs?
• New Forensic Agency Head Bradley: Best to Meet in Secret
• Tribune Poll: Who Knows