10.02.09

Perry’s pride and the Willingham case

Posted in 2010 Primary, Around The Nation, Around The State, Bad Government Republicans, Commentary, Criminal Justice, District Attorney, Election 2010, Had Enough Yet?, Williamson County at 12:29 pm by wcnews

The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”
- “Trial By Fire“, The New Yorker, September 2009

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“Unless there’s real solid evidence that the guy didn’t do it and Rick Perry’s people screwed up a review, I can’t see it becoming an issue,” GOP analyst Royal Masset said.
[…]
Texans still generally support the death penalty, [Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University] said. “It’s unlikely to become a cause celebre.”
- Royal Masset and Cal Jillson, HChron, October 2, 2009

If Perry wasn’t afraid of this case, he would not be going to these lengths. The so-called political “experts” (quotes borrowed from Gov. Perry), are wrong in this case. It’s obvious that Perry doesn’t want to be the poster child for what’s wrong with the death penalty. He also, let’s hope, didn’t want to be the first to admit killing an innocent man. But those reasons are likely why he is attempting to scuttle this investigation of the Willingham case. Now comes word that Perry may have committed a crime himself.

While they’re have already been references to Nixon and Watergate in this scandal as well, it also seems the main lesson of Watergate was not learned by Perry. The supposed lesson that politicians learned from Watergate was that the cover-up is worse than the crime. Obviously that hasn’t been learned here. In an attempt to make this go away, Perry’s cover-up, will likely keep it in the spotlight, and may even make it a bigger issue. In his attempt to try and keep the death penalty beyond reproach, he may kill his political career.

Perry is trying to tamp down the flames, (no pun intended), in this case by calling this move “normal protocol“, but it’s unlikely anyone outside of his slavish supporters actually will believe that. Speaking of slavish supporters there’s still the question of what John Bradley is going to do. Rick Casey essentially lays out Bradley’s option in today’s HChron, Conspiracy hypothesis to be tested.

The politico-scientific hypothesis is simple: Gov. Rick Perry scuttled today’s scheduled meeting in Dallas of the Texas Forensic Science Commission because it was sure to produce headlines claiming that in 2004 he authorized the execution of an innocent man.

The Anderson Cooper show from CNN was expected, as well as just about every major news outlet in Texas.

The commission would not have found Cameron Todd Willingham was wrongfully convicted in 1991 of killing his children. The commission is authorized to investigate only whether law enforcement officials and laboratories use science properly.

But it’s what the headlines would have said, and Perry is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign.

[…]

Perry replaced Bassett with Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. Bradley is also highly regarded but has earned a reputation not only as a tough prosecutor but also as an accomplished mover and shaker in the Capitol halls.

“I know John well,” said Houston Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and pushed for the Forensic Science Commission after Houston’s police lab blew up into a national scandal.
Whitmire said Bradley worked for that committee during legislative sessions when he was an assistant district attorney.

“I’ve never questioned his integrity,” Whitmire said. “He is very transparent.”

Whitmire said he talked to Bradley on Thursday morning and is “taking a wait-and-see approach” in hopes that “he won’t let Perry’s politics pull him down.”

“I told him, John, this is an opportunity to show what you’re made of,” he said.

But Whitmire also said he will schedule a committee hearing in about a month to ask Bradley in what direction he plans to take the commission. One likely question, said Whitmire: Will Bradley reschedule the Willingham arson matter before the March primary?

That likely will a laboratory test of the hypothesis that Perry appointed him as a political puppet.

Judging from this Bradley comment, we likely already know the outcome of that test, (via Grits), Texas Governor Defends Shakeup of Commission.

Mr. Bradley said he did not know if he would continue the inquiry into the Willingham conviction that his predecessor had started. He said he wanted to consult with the lawmakers who created the commission about its mission.

As Grits explained later in response to a troll comment who tried to defend Bradley’s point:

BTW, part of the Commission’s “mission” is “Investigating, in a timely manner, any allegation of professional negligence or misconduct that would substantially affect the integrity of the results of a forensic analysis conducted by an accredited laboratory, facility or entity.” To claim the Willingham investigation doesn’t fit under that charge is pure obfuscation. It obviously does.

Essentially Bradley is already trying to start a cover story for the cover-up work he will do for Perry.

While what Perry has done, and continues to do, is despicable we must make sure we don’t lose site of what this commission set out to do - insure the integrity of our legal system. This is not about the death penalty, so much, as it is about pride. The pride of not wanting to admit a mistake occurred so many years ago and an innocent man’s life was taken. At the heart of this is the need to find out what went wrong and why, so this can be fixed, and never happens again. Also remember that even if Willingham hadn’t been murdered by the state - if he had received a life sentence instead - he would have sat in jail for 15 years now, for a crime he did not commit. And that would have been wrong too.

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