Texas forensics panel to move ahead with Willingham arson case probe

A state panel decided Friday to move ahead with its investigation of questionable arson science that contributed to the conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

The Willingham case has become part of the national debate on the death penalty with opponents suggesting that Texas in 2004 executed an innocent man. Gov. Rick Perry, prosecutors and others have maintained that other evidence clearly pointed to Willingham's guilt in the 1991 Corsicana house (left) fire that killed his three daughters.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission was poised last October to hear from a national expert it had hired to review the case when Gov. Rick Perry removed the commission's chairman and two other members two days before the meeting.

Perry's new appointee to head the commission, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, cancelled the meeting citing his need to educate himself on commission's business.

The Willingham case returned to the agenda on Friday, seven months later, with commission members deciding to continue gathering information.

A new four-member panel – Bradley, Fort Worth defense attorney Lance Evans, Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani and forensic scientist Sarah Kerrigan -- of the nine-member commission was named to take charge of the Willingham review.

Kerrigan said that the commission had hired national fire expert Craig L. Beyler to examine the Willingham case.

His report found a shoddy investigation and old myths about fire made it impossible to determine the fire was intentionally set or that accelerants were used.

Beyler was scheduled to testify before the commission at the October meeting that was cancelled.

Kerrigan said that the commission's investigation still has a long way to go, including examining the state fire marshal's response, which has yet to be completed, as well as review of transcripts, videotapes and subsequent comments that Willingham might have made to his estranged wife indicating his guilt.

"Beyler was just one part of the information. We've had a delay. It's very much in its infancy," Kerrigan said of the investigation.

"We're very far from a conclusion," Peerwani said.

He said that he believes the panel will ask Beyler some questions in writing and invite him again to come in person to discuss his findings.

The commission also decided to proceed in the investigation of Brandon Moon, who served 17 years in prison for a series of El Paso rapes that subsequent DNA tests show he did not commit.

Department of Public Safety lab tests made on the evidence were "perhaps in error" and expert testimony might have given "undue weight to the serological tests" that identified Moon as the source," said commission member Arthur Eisenberg, a forensic scientist.

Moon was exonerated in 2004.

Sourc: Dallas Morning News, April 23, 2010

No more foot-dragging in Willingham case

The head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission needs to demonstrate today that he's not playing stall ball in the politically explosive arson-murder case of Cameron Todd Willingham.

A complaint to the commission about forensic work that led to Willingham's conviction and execution will reach its 4th anniversary next week.

For two of those years, the commission couldn't be accused of indifference, since it had been limping along without money, telephone or even a full-time staff member.

But the commission has been sitting on the Willingham matter for months, with a damning expert's report in its lap. Suspicion lingers that Chairman John Bradley, installed by the governor last fall, wants to delay the matter until after voters decide whether to return Gov. Rick Perry to office in November.

Bradley has the chance to refute the foot-dragging charge at a meeting in Irving today, where the case is on the agenda. He must show a sense of urgency toward the commission's core business of weeding out junk science from criminal investigations.

Since Bradley took control, his maneuvers have lacked urgency. Instead, he plunged into matters of procedures and process, maintaining that the commission lacked both. Other board members have disputed that, telling lawmakers at a House hearing last week that their work had been efficient, careful and deliberate before Bradley.

Commissioner Sarah Kerrigan, a Scotland Yard-trained forensic scientist from Sam Houston State University, pointed out that the panel had been meeting every other month, but is meeting quarterly since Bradley called his first session in January. His agenda was dominated by procedural discussion and, tellingly, included no opportunity for public comment (an omission that won't be repeated today).

As Williamson County's district attorney, Bradley is used to conducting business outside of public view. It looks like he would like to continue that as commission chair. Lawmakers have been disturbed – as this newspaper is – by reports that Bradley tried to get other commissioners to destroy e-mails and refuse to make public statements. Further, committees named by Bradley met last week in secret, with no posted notice.

In contrast, many eyes will be on Bradley today. People want to hear when he intends to take up the report of eminent arson scientist Craig Beyler in the fire deaths of Willingham's three daughters in Corsicana. Many wonder whether Beyler was right in reporting in August that evidence at Willingham's 1991 murder trial was the fruit of hocus-pocus, slipshod investigations.

Bradley says the commission's role is not to assess verdicts in criminal cases, and we respect that. Willingham was executed in 2004, under Perry's watch, and his guilt may never be conclusively challenged.

But the commission can and should get busy identifying garbage forensic work to keep it out of Texas courtrooms.

Source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News, April 23, 2010

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