"Fired Up," is the title of Mary Alice Robbins' report for Texas Lawyer. It gives us the most detailed look at John Bradley's plans as the new Chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission.
The prosecutor heading a commission at the center of a political firestorm will recommend ways to improve the panel’s operations at a Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing Nov. 10. The controversy ignited in September when Gov. Rick Perry abruptly replaced two commission members two days before they were to review an arson expert’s report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a death-row inmate executed in 2004 after Perry declined to grant him a 30-day reprieve.
Anti-death penalty activists have contended that Willingham was innocent and that Perry replaced the commission members to block a review of a report questioning whether the fire Willingham was accused of starting was arson.
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.
Other agencies that have an investigative function, including those in law enforcement, are protected from the Texas Open Meetings Act and the Public Information Act during their deliberations, Bradley says. When investigations are conducted in public, it is difficult to protect them from outside influences, he says.
Bradley says he also will suggest that commission members be appointed for three-year terms, not the two years currently provided under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 38.01, so that there is time to train members to carry out the commission’s mission.
“The commission’s work is focused on investigating and then deliberating on allegations of negligence and misconduct in the forensic science field,” Bradley says.
Bradley says that when people act as investigators and judges, they typically should have some background in that work. Most members of the commission don’t do investigative work and need training, he says.
One of the things the commission needs to do, Bradley says, is to develop and adopt written policies and procedures, which it has never had.
But Bradley’s proposed changes come as the commission’s former chairman says the governor replaced him when the commission started looking into the science that helped convict a man of starting a fire that killed his three young daughters.
Perry appointed Bradley to the commission and named him chairman on Sept. 30 — two days before the commission was scheduled to review the findings of an arson expert hired by the commission to evaluate the methods and procedures used by fire investigators in the arson case against Willingham. The Willingham case is one of three the commission has looked into, but it is the first one to reach the report stage.
And:
State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairs the criminal justice committee and was a sponsor of H.B. 1068, the 2005 measure that created the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Whitmire, of counsel at Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, says he will ask Bradley at the Nov. 10 hearing for a status report on the commission and for Bradley’s assessment of the scope and parameters of the commission’s authority.
But Whitmire says he will also ask Bradley, “Oh, by the way, are you going to hear from Beyler?”
Whitmire says he is not troubled by Perry’s replacement of the commission members.
“My position is: He is the governor,” Whitmire says. “He makes appointments.”
But Whitmire says the timing of Perry’s decision to replace these commission members was unfortunate.
“If he had made the decision a month earlier, this situation wouldn’t be the way it is,” Whitmire says.
Whitmire says the situation does not prevent a new set of members from doing their work, which he says is “critical.” He says the important thing is to learn from the forensics and move forward.
Earlier coverage of the Todd Willingham case begins with this post. All coverage is also available through the Todd Willingham category index.
The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format. David Grann's New Yorker article is noted here. The Innocence Project's Todd Willingham resource page provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents. Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science. The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."
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