Texas commission’s report on Cameron Todd Willingham arson case avoids central questions

A state panel’s draft report on the 1991 arson investigation that led to Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution, released Thursday, avoids central questions raised by fire experts and advocates.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission began a 2-day meeting with discussion of the report, which was limited because of a pending request filed with the attorney general’s office that questions whether the commission has authority to investigate the case.

For now, the report addresses only standards of fire investigations based on expert testimony and documents collected over the last 2 years.

Opponents of the death penalty have touted the case of Willingham — executed in 2004 for the deaths of his three daughters in the fire — as a likely case in which an innocent person was executed because now-discredited science was used to declare the blaze to be arson. Others question that, saying Willingham’s guilt was proved by other factors.

The report could be the final, and inconclusive, chapter in the saga, if the attorney general agrees with the Corsicana Fire Department and the state fire marshal’s office that the commission does not have the power to determine negligence or misconduct in the case.

“If they fail to respond to the actual allegation filed, which this report does, then it will have failed to provide the public confidence in forensics that the Legislature intended,” said Steven Saloom of the New York-based Innocence Project, which filed the original complaint.

Some commission members said that parts of the report “dance around the issue” by not specifically tying fire investigation standards to the Willingham case.

“It looks at the history and progress of fire science,” said the commission’s general counsel Lynn Robitaille, who drafted the language of the report based on input from the nine commissioners.

It outlines recommendations for arson science, based on the review of the Willingham case.

“The commission has to be cautious not inferring or concluding negligence or misconduct until we have jurisdiction on this issue,” said Chairman John Bradley.

Commissioner Sarah Kerrigan questioned why members of the panel, none of whom are arson investigators, are making suggestions to the state fire marshal’s office about the standards of practice.

The hearing is likely to be the last led by Bradley, the Williamson County district attorney, because his nomination lacks sufficient support in the Senate.

Gov. Rick Perry shook up the commission in 2009, firing its chairman, just before it was to hear from a fire expert who criticized the fire science used to convict Willingham.

Source: Dallas Morning News, April 14, 2011

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