"(FORMER CHAIR) BASSETT SAID HE BELIEVED THAT, WHILE THE COMMISSION MIGHT WELL COMMENT ON BACKLOGS IF THEY RELATED TO AN INVESTIGATION, HE DIDN’T VIEW THAT AS A GENERAL PRIORITY. “IF THEY'RE ABLE TO GET IN THREE WITNESSES TO TALK ABOUT LAB BACKLOGS, IT SEEMS LIKE THEY'D BE ABLE TO GET A FEW EXPERTS TO TALK ABOUT WILLIS/WILLINGHAM,” HE SAID, ADDING, “JUST THE IDEA THAT YOU WOULD SPEND AN HOUR SPEAKING ABOUT LAB BACKLOGS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES TALKING ABOUT WILLIS/WILLINGHAM, WHEN SEEMS TO ME IT WOULD BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND, IS BAFFLING.” AFTER THE MEETING, BRADLEY DECLINED TO GIVE A TIMELINE FOR WHEN THE COMMISSION MIGHT CONCLUDE ITS REVIEW: “HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES, THAT’S HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES.”"
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BACKGROUND: (Wikipedia); Cameron Todd Willingham (January 9, 1968 – February 17, 2004), born in Carter County, Oklahoma, was sentenced to death by the state of Texas for murdering his three daughters—two year old Amber Louise Kuykendall, and one year old twins Karmon Diane Willingham and Kameron Marie Willingham— by setting his house on fire. The fire occurred on December 23, 1991 in Corsicana, Texas. Lighter fluid was kept on the front porch of Willingham’s house as evidenced by a melted container found there. Some of this fluid may have entered the front doorway of the house carried along by fire hose water. It was alleged this fluid was deliberately poured to start the fire and that Willingham chose this entrance way so as to impede rescue attempts. The prosecution also used other arson theories that have since been brought into question. In addition to the arson evidence, a jailhouse informant claimed Willingham confessed that he set the fire to hide his wife's physical abuse of the girls, although the girls showed no other injuries besides those caused by the fire. Neighbors also testified that Willingham did not try hard enough to save his children. They allege he "crouched down" in his front yard and watched the house burn for a period of time without attempting to enter the home or go to neighbors for help or request they call firefighters. He claimed that he tried to go back into the house but it was "too hot". As firefighters arrived, however, he rushed towards the garage and pushed his car away from the burning building, requesting firefighters do the same rather than put out the fire. After the fire, Willingham showed no emotion at the death of his children and spent the next day sorting through the debris, laughing and playing music. He expressed anger after finding his dartboard burned in the fire. Firefighters and other witnesses found him suspicious of how he reacted during and after the fire. Willingham was charged with murder on January 8, 1992. During his trial in August 1992, he was offered a life term in exchange for a guilty plea, which he turned down insisting he was innocent. After his conviction, he and his wife divorced. She later stated that she believed that Willingham was guilty. Prosecutors alleged this was part of a pattern of behavior intended to rid himself of his children. Willingham had a history of committing crimes, including burglary, grand larceny and car theft. There was also an incident when he beat his pregnant wife over the stomach with a telephone to induce a miscarriage. When asked if he had a final statement, Willingham said: "Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby." However, his final words were directed at his ex-wife, Stacy Willingham. He turned to her and said "I hope you rot in hell, bitch" several times while attempting to extend his middle finger in an obscene gesture. His ex-wife did not show any reaction to this. He was executed by lethal injection on February 17, 2004. Subsequent to that date, persistent questions have been raised as to the accuracy of the forensic evidence used in the conviction, specifically, whether it can be proven that an accelerant (such as the lighter fluid mentioned above) was used to start the fatal fire. Fire investigator Gerald L. Hurst reviewed the case documents including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene. Hurst said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire."
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"Under a crystal chandelier, in a boardroom with all the gilded flourishes of the Irving Omni Mandalay Hotel’s faux-Mediterranean decor, Forensic Science Commission Chairman John Bradley presided over the state agency’s April quarterly meeting on Friday, which, as advertised, addressed the languishing investigation of Cameron Todd Willingham," Morgan Smith's April 26, 2010, Texas Tribune column begins, under the heading, "The Big Stall".
"His case occupied less than fifteen minutes of the six-and-a-half hour session," the column continues.
"That was enough time for Commissioner Sarah Kerrigan to emphasize the commission’s consideration of the long-delayed complaint was “still in its infancy.”
“Other than identifying that it was worthy of an investigation and hiring a consultant to help us, we haven’t made any other progress. We’ve only just begun to assemble the pieces we need,” said Kerrigan, a forensic scientist.
Texas convicted Willingham of the arson fire that killed his three daughters in 1991 and put him to death in 2004. Way back in October, the commission was set to address the serious concerns about the evidence in the case. But two days before, in the wake of a 16,000 word New Yorker piece that brought national scrutiny to the state, and in the midst of a bitter primary election, Gov. Rick Perry replaced three of the commission's members, including then-Chairman Sam Bassett. When Bradley, the Williamson County district attorney, took Bassett’s place, he promptly shelved the Willingham investigation, saying he need more time to acquaint himself with the commission’s operations.
Since his appointment, the alternately amiable and peevish, typically cowboy-boot-shod Bradley has comported himself as a virtuoso of the bureaucratic dawdle. Under Bradley’s watch, the commission has shifted from meeting on a two-month to a three-month basis, reported to two Senate committees and one interim House committee, and displayed general confusion about its public records policy and legislative oversight procedures. Earlier this month, Bradley riled legislators at an interim hearing of the House Public Safety Committee by failing to appear before them to answer questions about delays in the case. Bradley chalked up his non-appearance to being given “less than a week’s notice," too little for an official of his stature and tight schedule.
Bassett, the man who Bradley abruptly replaced, watched Friday’s meeting on a live stream broadcast. He summed up the situation this way: “It’s tortuously slow how long it’s taking.”
On Friday, in its most substantive move regarding the case, the commission voted to add Fort Worth criminal defense attorney Lance Evans to the previously three-person subcommittee charged with considering it. Citing a concern that the panel should contain another member with a legal background, Evans said, “obviously everyone is aware of the public perception of what is going on regarding this investigation.”
Deliberations of the subcommittee — which in addition to Evans consists of Bradley, Kerrigan, and Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani — will likely not be public, Bradley said. Since it will not form a quorum of the total commission members, the Open Meetings Act does not cover its gatherings, and it is not obligated to make a record of its discussions available to the public.
Willingham’s execution was first officially called into question in August, when Craig Beyler, a fire expert and the consultant to which Kerrigan referred, issued a damaging report to the commission that discredited the methods the state used to convict Willingham. Beyler’s assessment that one state fire investigator “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created” is characteristic of his conclusions throughout the report.
In 2007, while Bassett was chair, the Innocence Project submitted a complaint to the commission concerning the arson science the state used to hand death sentences to Willingham, who was executed in 2004, and a second man, Ernest Willis, who was later exonerated. Bassett said at the time he was “very confident” that the commission would be able to finish a report on the complaint “by the summer of 2010.”
On Friday, the commission spent the morning trudging through the topic of a backlog in forensic testing laboratories, something Innocence Project Policy Director Stephen Saloom, who attended the meeting, complained wasn’t even within its power to address. A visibly upset Saloom said in an interview that the commission was distorting its legislative mandate. He cited its enacting statute, which describes the duties of the commission as investigating — “in a timely manner” — allegations of professional misconduct and developing a “reporting system” to do so.
After ninety minutes of invited testimony from three different witnesses, during which the questioning came almost exclusively from Bradley, Kerrigan spoke to Saloom’s point without him ever raising it publicly: “It’s probably beyond the scope of the commission to think that we can address the backlog of the labs in Texas, we already have very competent people addressing those issues.”
Bassett said he believed that, while the commission might well comment on backlogs if they related to an investigation, he didn’t view that as a general priority. “If they're able to get in three witnesses to talk about lab backlogs, it seems like they'd be able to get a few experts to talk about Willis/Willingham,” he said, adding, “Just the idea that you would spend an hour speaking about lab backlogs and fifteen minutes talking about Willis/Willingham, when seems to me it would be the other way around, is baffling.”
After the meeting, Bradley declined to give a timeline for when the commission might conclude its review: “However long it takes, that’s however long it takes.”
The column can be found at:
http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/apr/26/big-stall/
