Reply #3: Grits for Breakfast take on the switch [View All]

[sonias]

Grits for Breakfast blog 9/30/09
Perry scuttles Willingham arson inquiry with new Forensic Commission appointment: John Bradley

Outrageous!

It'd be hard to make this up; it seems more like caricature or some tale from days of yore out of Tammany Hall, but it's actually today's news: Governor Rick Perry has ousted the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which had displeased him by soliciting what turned out to be damning expert opinion regarding the Cameron Todd Willingham case (in which supposedly expert arson testimony used to convict Willingham and justify his execution was later debunked by modern science). The case has drawn national attention since the release of expert testimony solicited by the commission followed by the publication of a widely cited New Yorker article last month.

As the new chair, Perry chose (of all people) Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, who prides himself on being one of the most outspoken proponents among Texas prosecutors of a sort of neoconservative, tough on crime philosophy. The Statesman called Bradley "a tough-on-crime politically connected conservative." I've certainly heard him called worse!

(snip)
Perry is the only governor ever to appoint members to the Forensic Science Commission so this signals his displeasure, one assumes, with his prior appointees. Perry has said previously he believed Cameron Todd Willingham was guilty even if the arson science presented at his trial was wrong.

Sonia