Below is a video of The Innocence Project’s Barry Scheck speaking to Texas Forensic Science Commission in Houston on July 23, 2010. Video was shot by Texas Moratorium Network.

Watch the whole video to understand Barry Scheck’s objections to the Commission’s tentative findings. Click here to watch the video on YouTube or click here to watch it on TMN’s Facebook page.

The final report is not yet complete, so the Commission could still take into account Scheck’s objections.

Around the 3:35 minute is when the fireworks start after John Bradley motions to his assistant that she should tell Scheck that his time is up.

http://camerontoddwillingham.com

From the Houston Chronicle:

A commission reviewing a disputed arson finding that led to a Corsicana man’s 2004 execution for the deaths of his three young children said in a preliminary report Friday that the fire investigators used flawed science but didn’t commit negligence or misconduct.

Members of the state commission investigating a controversial Corsicana arson case in which three children died — and for which their father was executed — acknowledged on Friday that state and local arson investigators used “flawed science” in determining the blaze had been deliberately set.

But the Texas Forensic Science Commission panel heading the inquiry also found insufficient evidence to prove that state Deputy Fire Marshal Manuel Vasquez and Corsicana Assistant Fire Chief Douglas Fogg were negligent or guilty of misconduct in their arson work.
The investigators, they said, likely used standards accepted in Texas at the time of the fire, which erupted at the home of Cameron Todd Willingham in December 1991. Willingham went to his execution in 2004 proclaiming his innocence in the deaths of his 1-year-old twins and 2-year-old step daughter.
The tentative findings were announced at the commission’s quarterly meeting in Houston.

Commissioners authorized the four-member committee to write a draft report reflecting their findings to be acted on later this summer. The panel, headed by commission Chairman John Bradley, also will solicit more information regarding the state of investigation standards in 1991. It will accept written public comments until Aug. 12.

Friday’s action was the latest chapter in the contentious review of the arson investigators’ work spurred by a complaint filed by the New York-based Innocence Project. The commission is not tasked with determining whether Texas might have executed an innocent man, but whether the arson investigators followed sound scientific principles.
Other reviews critical

At least three expert reviews, including a commission-financed study by Baltimore fire expert Craig Beyler, have been critical of the arson investigations. Burn patterns, multiple points of origin and other phenomenon investigators found at the scene wrongly were interpreted as signs the fire deliberately was set, the experts concluded.

Beyler, who wrote that investigators observed neither the standards of the National Fire Prevention Association, adopted shortly after the blaze, nor standards applicable at the time of the fire, was scheduled to appear before commissioners last September.

Days before the meeting, however, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission chairman with Bradley, district attorney in Williamson County. The session at which Beyler was scheduled to speak was canceled, and the fire expert never appeared before the body.
Friday’s action spurred a heated exchange between Bradley and Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, who bolted from his seat to protest. Bradley repeatedly refused to yield the floor.

Family optimistic

Scheck’s organization argues that the state fire marshal’s office should have been aware of updated arson investigation standards and – in any event – should have advised prosecutors and the court of them when they were adopted.

The new standards went into effect in early 1992.
“It’s alarming that they’ve missed the point of our allegations,” Innocence Project policy director Stephen Saloom said. “The state fire marshal’s office had a continuing duty to inform prosecutors, the court, pardons and paroles or the governor of the unreliability of the old evidence.”

While national fire experts may have known in late 1991 that new standards were in the works, investigation committee members said, it’s possible rank-and-file investigators did not.

Willingham’s mother, Eugenia Willingham, and his cousin, Patricia Cox, who were present for Friday’s session, viewed the commission’s action as a positive development.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Cox said. “We’re Todd’s voice after death. We’re going to exonerate him. We’re not going away.”

Eugenia Willingham said her son would have been pleased. “His wish was that we clear his name,” she said. “He was innocent and prosecuted for something he didn’t do. … I hope that somewhere or other he saw what happened today.”

Texas Moratorium Network shot this video of Todd Willingham’s cousin Patricia Willingham Cox speaking at the meeting of the Texas Forensic Science Commission in Houston on July 23, 2010. Click here to watch the video on YouTube. Or click here to watch it on the TMN Facebook page.

Todd’s stepmother Eugenia Willingham is sitting beside Patricia while she speaks. Normally, when a family member speaks at a hearing, for instance at a committee hearing at the Legislature, the person chairing the hearing is very nice and thanks the person for coming and maybe even offers some words of comfort to them if they start crying. The chair often even says something like they know how difficult it is to speak in public at a hearing like this. We have seen that happen a lot at the Legislature, but John Bradley has absolutely no social skills or empathy, so he didn’t say anything after Patricia Cox spoke or after Eugenia is asked if she wants to speak, but she declines because she is weeping. What an ass John Bradley is.

A commission reviewing a disputed arson finding that led to a Corsicana man’s 2004 execution for the deaths of his three young children said in a preliminary report Friday that the fire investigators used flawed science but didn’t commit negligence or misconduct.

Patricia Cox, Todd Willingham’s cousin, told commission members that she appreciated the group’s acknowledgment that the forensic evidence used to convict her loved one was flawed.

“Even though there may not have been any malice or intent by fire investigators about not being informed on current standards, that doesn’t excuse the fact that, based on this misinformation, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed, and that can’t be corrected,” said a tearful Cox.

Willingham’s stepmother, Eugenia Willingham, was too upset to speak during the meeting’s public comment section. But during a break, she said she couldn’t believe the panel’s conclusion and vowed to continue fighting for her stepson’s exoneration.

Both Cox and Eugenia Willingham came from their hometown of Ardmore, Okla., to attend the meeting. Two other women at the meeting held signs with photographs of Willingham that read: “No More Cover Up! Todd: Innocent and Executed!” and “Put Todd Willingham on the Agenda.”

Here is a link to the live stream of the Forensic Science Meeting.  

View the meeting agenda.

Eugenia Willingham and Patricia Willingham Cox will probably make public comments to the commission at the end of the meeting. The are pictured below with TMN’s Scott Cobb.

Members of Texas Moratorium Network and others are in Houston this morning to attend the meeting of the Texas Forensic Science Commission. We intend to let Rick Perry’s appointed chair/puppet John Bradley know that it is Texans, not just “New York lawyers”, who are concerned that our state government suffered an epic FAIL and may have executed an innocent person. We demand the investigation into the Willingham case be made the highest priority of the Commission and of the State government of Texas.

If Rick Perry had done his job properly as governor, the people of Texas would not have to be worried now that an innocent person has been executed in our names. The only person who has politicized the work of the Texas Forensic Science Commission is Texas Governor Rick Perry.

From CNN:

(CNN) — A Texas state board is set Friday to revisit questions surrounding a controversial 2004 execution, with supporters of the man’s family warning the panel is trying to bury its own critical review of the case.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for a fire that killed his three daughters. Prosecutors argued that Willingham deliberately set the 1991 blaze — but three reviews of the evidence by outside experts have found the fire should not have been ruled arson.

The last of those reports was ordered by the Texas Forensic Sciences Commission, which has been looking into Willingham’s execution since 2008. But a September 2009 shake-up by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has kept that panel from reviewing the report, and the commission’s new chairman has ordered a review of its operating rules. Critics say that may kill the probe.

“They are attempting permanently to keep the investigation from continuing and moving on, and I do believe it’s because they don’t like the direction the evidence is leading,” Willingham’s cousin, Pat Cox, said Thursday.

The Forensic Science Commission’s chairman is now John Bradley, an Austin-area district attorney with a reputation as a staunch supporter of the death penalty. Bradley has pledged to state lawmakers that the Willingham investigation “absolutely” will continue — but said the panel needs better rules to guide its work, and could not say when the Willingham issue would move forward.

Thursday, he told CNN that concerns of Willingham’s supporters were based on “a lot of misinformation.”

“I think that’s being used very much as a side issue to politicize, through some New York lawyers, the work of the commission,” Bradley said. “The commission has been very clear that the commission is going to address the merits of the Willingham case.”

The panel meets again Friday in Houston, and one of the items on its agenda is a legal opinion arguing that the panel has “relatively narrow investigative jurisdiction.” The unsigned memorandum argues that the commission’s mandate covers only cases on which a state-accredited forensic laboratory worked.

But because Texas started accrediting crime labs in 2003, Cox and others who have backed the family say that would mean cases such as Willingham’s and that of another inmate, Ernest Willis, would be dropped. State Sen. Rodney Ellis, who pushed for the commission’s creation, calls the opinion flawed.

The Forensic Sciences Commission “was operating within the language and intent of the law when it determined that it had jurisdiction to investigate the case the first time in August 2008,” Ellis said in a written statement to CNN. “Frankly, I am surprised that the commission is even questioning whether or not it has jurisdiction, since it unanimously decided — with the attorney general’s representative in the room — to review the cases over two years ago.”

Ellis, a Houston Democrat, serves as the chairman of the board of The Innocence Project — the “New York lawyers” that have supported efforts by Willingham’s stepmother and cousins to clear his name. The group advocates for prisoners it says are wrongly convicted, and Ellis said the commission’s work “is too important to be bogged down in political bickering.”

“Texans need the FSC to perform its work in a timely manner, so the public can once again have confidence in forensic evidence and confidence that the truly guilty are behind bars and the innocent are free,” he said.

But Bradley said the commission has never decided to apply the logic of the legal opinion to the case on Friday’s agenda.

Bradley was named the panel’s chairman two days before the Forensic Sciences Commission was to hear from Craig Beyler, a Maryland-based fire science expert. Beyler concluded the arson finding at the heart of the Willingham case “could not be sustained,” either by current standards or those in place at the time.

The Innocence Project requested the investigation after a report it commissioned reached the same conclusion. Death-penalty opponents say an impartial review of Willingham’s case could lead to the unprecedented admission that the state executed an innocent man.

Perry, who signed off on Willingham’s execution, is up for re-election in November, and his critics have accused him of trying to short-circuit that review. Perry has said he remains confident of the condemned man’s guilt, and police in the town of Corsicana, where the fire occurred, say other evidence beyond the arson testimony Beyler criticized supports the prosecution.

Cox, a retired nurse in Ardmore, Oklahoma, told CNN that spiking the commission’s investigation would be a “blatant miscarriage of justice.”

“The reasonable people of this country and the state of Texas can see through what this is,” she said.

Todd Willingham’s last lawyer, Walter Reaves, has written a blog post on what he expects at Friday’s meeting of the Texas Forensic Science Commission in Houston:

I was going to talk about the ridiculousness about the recent memo from the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Basically, the memo says they don’t have jurisdiction to do anything. They concluded that they do not have “discretion or power to investigate any and every complainant alleging professional negligence or misconduct involving a forensic science.” The complaint must involve a “discipline” recognized by the DPS and accredited by DPS. In practical terms, that means they can’t investigate the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Yes, I know he promised that would not happen, but anyone who actually believed him deserves what they are getting.

I decided not to talk about that decision, because by now everyone knows what to expect from the commission. Their goal – at least under the leadership of John Bradley – has been to scuttle the investigation into Willingham, and anything else that might hinder law enforcement. He has successfully done what many lawyers attempt – avoid doing anything. This new memo goes a long way to ensuring that they will not get involved in anything meaningful.

What struck me about the memo is the power DPS has to both decide what is a forensic discipline, and who gets accredited. DPS is not without its own problems, but despite those problems they apparently have the all knowing ability to determine who should or should not be accredited. It reminds of a story a someone told me about an individual who couldn’t get certified as a fire investigator. He ended up establishing his own organization, and certified himself; that organization now certifies others.

DPS is an arm of law enforcement, and no matter how hard they try they cannot divorce themselves from their identity. One of the main recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences was that crime labs be separated from law enforcement. If the crime lab should be separate, then surely the authority to accredit such labs should also be separate.

Another thing that struck me, was the definition of what is a forensic discipline. If it’s not a forensic discipline, then no accreditation is necessary. The legislature exempted certain things, and DPS is given authority to exempt others. There are at least two that stand out in the legislature’s exemptions – latent fingerprint examination and breath tests. If those two areas don’t involve forensic analysis, then what are they? Fingerprint examiners like to talk about how their “scientific” their process is. As for breath tests, the very tests are based on scientific principles. The reason for exempting them probably lies in the fear that they might not be able to overcome the strict scrutiny given to other forensic disciplines.

The commission meets next week, and no doubt will discuss this memo. My guess is that it will be repeat of the last meeting – they will spend all their time talking about what they can and cannot do, and avoid actually doing anything.

Below is the memo that Walter Reaves refers to in his blog post.

TFSC memo