The Texas Forensic Science Commission rebelled Friday against its head commissioner, refusing to accept his draft report clearing arson investigators of misconduct or negligence in a 1991 fatal fire where flawed science was used to determine the blaze was intentionally set.
Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for killing his three children by setting that blaze. Texas may have executed an innocent man on Gov. Rick Perry's watch if the fire was accidental.
"There's a lot of work to be done still," Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani, a member of the commission, said after the meeting. "That's why the commission didn't approve the draft."
The commission instead plans to question arson experts at a future meeting about investigation standards at the time of the fire and will look into whether the investigators knew or should have known the science that led them to assume the fire was caused by arson was flawed.
That puts the commission's plans right back where they were nearly a year ago, just before Perry suddenly replaced the chairman and two members of the commission.
Perry's October 2009 dismissals came two days before commissioners were to hear from Baltimore-based Craig Beyler, a nationally recognized fire expert hired by the panel. Beyler has called the fire investigation into the Willingham case slipshod, saying the conclusion that the fire was caused by arson was based on wives' tales about how fire behaves.
Perry's replacements were seen by some as a political maneuver intended to change the outcome of the commission's decision. Perry replaced Austin defense attorney Sam Bassett with conservative Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley as head of the commission.
Source: Dallas Morning News, September 23, 2010
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