"There are lots of unanswered questions for the committee to ask Mr. Bradley. He only talks to friendly media and limits his comments to tightly constructed political barbs instead of honest answers to legitimate questions, so there's a lot of untrod ground to cover. The Dallas News published a list of written questions he repeatedly refused to answer, for example, on the grounds that they sounded like they came from a "New York lawyer." I supplied satirical responses on Bradley's behalf.
They could also check with members of the House Public Safety Committee, who asked Bradley to appear to answer questions but were snubbed with a no-show. There are plenty of unanswered questions out there if they start looking, and the nominations process would be a good place, finally, to get responses........."
GRITS FOR BREAKFAST; "Grits for Breakfast says it "looks at the Texas criminal justice system, with a little politics and whatever else suits the author's (Scott Henson) fancy thrown in. All opinions are my own. The facts belong to everybody." Its motto: "Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."
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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 were 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. Legendary "Innocence" lawyer Barry Scheck asked participants at a conference of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers held in Toronto in August, 2010, how Willingham, who had lost his family to the fire, must have felt to hear the horrific allegations made against him on the basis of the bogus evidence, "and nobody pays any attention to it as he gets executed." "It's the Dreyfus Affair, and you all know what that is," Scheck continued. "It's the Dreyfus AffaIr of the United States. Luke Power's music video "Texas Death Row Blues," can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2010/09/cameron-todd-willingham-texas-death-row_02.html
For an important critique of the devastating state of arson investigation in America with particular reference to the Willingham and Willis cases, go to:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/01/fire-investigation-great-read-veteran.html
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"Governor Rick Perry's appointees to the Texas Forensic Science Commission are up in the Senate Nominations Committee tomorrow," the Grits for Breakfast post published earlier today under the heading, "Questioning John Bradley: Forensic Science Commissioners up in Senate Nominations tomorrow," begins.
"Senators should use the forum to force Commission Chairman John Bradley to answer all the questions he's dodged in the past - especially about the ways in which he's delayed or shut down all the Commission's activities after his appointment in 2009," the post continues.
"The other commissioners who are up IMO have done a good job; even if I haven't always agreed with them on every jot and tittle, I've never once thought they were acting in bad faith. That hasn't always been true of the chair.
There are lots of unanswered questions for the committee to ask Mr. Bradley. He only talks to friendly media and limits his comments to tightly constructed political barbs instead of honest answers to legitimate questions, so there's a lot of untrod ground to cover. The Dallas News published a list of written questions he repeatedly refused to answer, for example, on the grounds that they sounded like they came from a "New York lawyer." I supplied satirical responses on Bradley's behalf.
They could also check with members of the House Public Safety Committee, who asked Bradley to appear to answer questions but were snubbed with a no-show. There are plenty of unanswered questions out there if they start looking, and the nominations process would be a good place, finally, to get responses.
Regular readers will recall Bradley's first official act as chairman was to unilaterally shut down a long-scheduled hearing to evaluate arson science used in the Todd Willingham and Ernest Willis cases, a move which was widely interpreted as an effort by Bradley and the Governor to improperly delay an inquiry into faulty forensics used to justify putting Mr. Willingham to death until after the November 2010 elections. After Bradley made the rounds in the media calling Willingham a "guilty monster," he was scolded by other commissioners at an FSC meeting, where "six of the seven other commission members present at the meeting voiced disapproval or discomfort" with Bradley's statements. (When commissioners finally heard the expert testimony earlier this year, it was brutally damning.)
Having shut down not just commission investigations but a series of planned educational events, Bradley proceeded to railroad through a set of policies and rules at the next commission meeting, leaving all pending business off their agenda and giving commissioners only a single day after receiving a draft to vote on them. After wasting a full meeting securing votes for these policies, he pointed out that the AG advised the FSC has no rulemaking authority and that the rules and policies they'd just approved were only nonbinding guidelines that did not in any way restrain the commission. So in effect, Mr. Bradley stopped all the agency's productive activities to waste time debating and voting on policies he knew the agency had no authority to enact. In a post evaluating the Chairman's performance at that meeting, Grits accused Bradley of "Usurping power from commissioners," "Hijacking the meeting agenda," "Concealing key activities from commissioners," Wasting commissioners time," "Ignoring 'process'," and "Dissembling." I doubt any neutral observer who watched his bullying performance would disagree.
The only case the Commission has voted to accept since Mr. Bradley came onboard involved allegations against the Austin PD crime lab that several outside entities have already looked into and determined to be unfounded. I attended the screening committee meeting involving the case, where Dr. Nizam Peerwani, a medical examiner from Fort Worth who will also face the Nominating committee tomorrow, strongly argued that the case had no merit and the FSC shouldn't waste its time. But, as Grits then reported, "Bradley said the Commission needn't only be the bearer of 'bad news,' and that it would be worthwhile to 'deliver a positive message' to accredited labs that affirmed the value of their work." He also made a very legalistic argument: That the screening committee should only determine whether the elements of the complaint met the minimal threshold for consideration by the committee, but insisted they should not evaluate the merits. Peerwani's opinion that the complaint was meritless, said Bradley, was appropriate for discussion with the full board, but shouldn't be a consideration at the level of the Complaint Screening Committee (one of several committees created under the chairman's above-described policies and rules). Peerwani demurred, declaring his intention to recommend against investigating the case, and gave an "Aye" vote to allow consideration by the full Commisssion.
At the meeting where the FSC took up the case, though, Dr. Peerwani could not attend because he was required to testify in court back in Fort Worth. Bradlley promoted taking up the Austin case for the same reasons suggested at the Complaint Screening Committee, sending a positive message, etc., but did not tell his fellow commissioners about Dr. Peerwani's objections! As Grits reported, "Peerwani's rather strong objections to spending resources on the Austin case weren't voiced in absentia when it was discussed on Friday. Instead, his Aye vote at the screening committee was portrayed as an endorsement that the FSC investigate, which was the opposite of my impression from my memory and notes. Be that as it may, the case has been delegated to an investigative committee whose first meeting date has not been announced." I think the committee should ask Dr. Peerani about his opinions on the Austin case and then compare it to the record from the January FSC meeting where Bradley laid out the Screening Committee's recommendation. (If they need it, the national Innocence Project recorded video of the meetings.). The episode was an example in microcosm of how the chairman has run the committee: Saying whatever he needs to to get his way, even to the point of transparently misrepresenting facts or the opinions of others.
Besides questioning Bradley on efforts to deflect and distract the Commissioners from productive consideration of forensics (their mission), his politicized budget and hiring decisions deserve close review. Bradley has insisted on pushing through the creation of a General Counsel position from the Commission's limited budget, despite the fact that the Attorney General was already providing those services for free. The problem: The AG was giving advice that would allow investigations to go forward that Bradley wanted to shut down. The AG lawyer advising the FSC has always said they have authority to investigate cases like Willingham, Brandon Moon, and others dating from before when accreditation was required, but Bradley has requested a formal AG opinion seeking to overrule that advice. That's the context in which I view the creation of this unneeded General Counsel slot at the FSC: The chairman seems to be shopping for a lawyer who will give him the advice he wants for political reasons instead of a legal interpretation that's correct, and if he can't get that from an AG lawyer he'll seek to replace her with an attorney who reports directly to him. Plus, the tactic has the added benefit of bleeding scarce funds available for investigations, which he clearly wants to stymie, anyway.
Otherwise, hiring an attorney as the main staffer at the FSC would be an odd choice since a lawyer gives the commission no expertise at its main task of evaluating forensics and the salary diverts money that otherwise would have been used for functions that get more directly at the Commission's core mission. The General Counsel slot was created in January using monies that remain unspent mostly because the chairman shut down all the FSC educational events and investigations during calendar year 2010. But there's no money in their budget for the position, and in fact both HB 1 and SB 1 - the House and Senate budgets - would reduce the FSC's budget by roughly the amount of the new General Counsel's salary. Leaving ideology aside, that's just poor management.
Finally, there's the chairman's assiduous penchant for secrecy, violating the open meetings act at his first meeting as chair and seeking to close FSC deliberations and records to the public at every possible turn, a tactic which was rebuffed by his fellow commissioners.
Speaking of whom, I think the other commissioners should be asked their opinion of Mr. Bradley's performance, his proposals for conducting business in secret, his insistence on revisiting past AG advice and commission decisions on jurisdiction, the propriety of conclusory statements on the Willingham case, etc.. Perhaps most importantly: Ask Bradley's fellow FSC commissioners if they should be allowed to select their own chair from among their number instead of having the Governor pick? I guarantee the FSC would run a lot less contentiously and get a lot more accomplished if the majority on the commission were allowed to select their own chair. Bradley's shenanigans have alienated just about everybody who's witnessed them."
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The post can be found at:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be accessed at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
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