"Science defeats DA 8-0," is the title of his column in today's Houston Chronicle.
Here's the triumphant score from Friday's Texas Forensic Science Commission:
Science 8, District Attorney 0.
The battle was for the scientific soul of the commission. Chairman and Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley had distributed a "memorandum on jurisdiction" that concluded the Legislature authorized the commission to investigate only complaints involving crime labs accredited by the Department of Public Safety.
This would exclude the controversial case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed for the arson murder of his two young children based on allegedly bad science.
In other words, Bradley was asking the members of the commission, seven of whom are scientists, to give up most of their power to investigate the questionable use of police science in Texas.
It would be a severe blow to one of the few statewide efforts in the United States to address what the National Academy of Sciences last year reported was an epidemic of bad police science.
The victory for science was so overwhelming that even Bradley voted against adopting his own "memorandum."
And:
He said the interpretation expressed in the memorandum would lead to "absurd consequences" that the courts would not uphold.
Then he moved that "we not adopt the memorandum," which passed 8-0.
By this time Bradley had almost comically backed off. He couldn't quite bring himself to confess to having written the memo but did admit that "I helped coordinate and was the finger that hit the keyboard the most times."
He repeated several times that the memo was not intended to be binding but was "merely for reference," whatever that means.
Bradley's retreat may have been partly forced by statements to the commission by two senators, including one who sponsored the bill establishing the commission, and four members of the House committee with jurisdiction over it that his memo was entirely wrong.
Later in the meeting Bradley said he and another member of the four-member panel screening the high-profile case Willingham case had found the argument that it didn't fall under the commission's jurisdiction "compelling and interesting." But he also said he had publicly committed to completing that investigation and would do so.
(Note: Bradley chairs the Willingham panel but did not appoint himself as I reported Friday. He was elected by other members in closed session.)
The Willingham case survives, but it is only part of the importance of Friday's meeting. In what was literally a defining moment, the commissioners decided it is their job to address the broad issues of forensic science, not just what happens in a limited number of labs.
News coverage of the Forensic Science Commission meeting is at this post. All Willingham coverage is 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 September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here. 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."The Innocence Project, which webcast Friday's FSC meeting, has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.
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