Last Friday (Jan. 29, 2010) the Texas Forensic Science Commission conducted its first meeting under the leadership of Chairman John Bradley, the District Attorney of Williamson County. Bradley, who has become a lightning rod of criticism, was appointed to the Commission last September by Gov. Rick Perry after the governor’s controversial decision to remove former Commission Chairman Sam Bassett in the midst of Bassett’s efforts to conduct an open and full hearing in the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Willingham’s case has drawn immense national and international media attention since his February 2004 execution by the State of Texas because of a growing number of reports by forensic fire scientists which have concluded that Willingham did not intentionally set the fire that killed his three small children in a house fire in December 1991—a fire that led to Willingham’s capital murder conviction and eventual execution.

            Bradley’s first official decision after his appointment was to cancel an October hearing Bassett had set in the Willingham case—a decision Bassett had made based on a report by famed Maryland forensic fire expert Craig Beyler which lent serious credibility to claims by media and anti-death penalty groups that the state of Texas executed an innocent man when it put Willingham to death—a claim made even more controversial by media revelations last year that Gov. Perry had reviewed another forensic fire report shortly before Willingham’s execution that drew essentially the same conclusions as the Beyler report; namely,  the condemned inmate had not intentionally set the fire that killed his three children.

            Bradley’s first official act at last Friday’s meeting was to violate the Texas Open Meets Law when he ordered a Texas-based Innocence Project film crew removed from the hearing room. After telephone calls to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, that decision was quickly overruled and the film crew was allowed back into the hearing room to continue its filming. One must be able to assume that a state district attorney should know about the Texas Open Meetings Law; therefore, since Bradley so flagrantly violated it, one can reasonably infer that the district attorney either had no qualms about violating the law or he was ignorant of it, both of which are terrible indictments of an elected public official sworn to uphold the law. Whatever the case may be, it set the tone for the rest of the meeting.

            Bradley’s next official act was to re-schedule the hearing in the Willingham case for April 23^rd. This is well past the Republican gubernatorial primary election early next month and any possible runoff election on April 13^th. The April 23^rd hearing certainly benefits Gov. Perry’s reelection campaign because it places any embarrassing disclosures about the Willingham execution process over which the governor presided beyond the GOP gubernatorial election cycle.

            While Commission members were able to stave off repeated attempts by Bradley to consolidate all the Commission’s power under the chairman’s authority, the district attorney managed to secure approval for a new policy which effectively requires the Commission to give tremendous deference to any questionable forensic science decision made by a crime lab analyst. Bradley co-opted the judicial rule that any legal challenges to “sufficiency of evidence” in a criminal case must be “viewed in the light most favorable” to the prosecution and applied it to the forensic science expert decision-making.

            The “in the light most favorable” standard is virtually insurmountable. It means the Beyler report, and at least three other forensic reports supporting Beyler’s findings, will in all likelihood be dismissed because the arson findings presented at Willingham’s capital murder trial by state forensic fire experts must be view in a “light most favorable” to those state experts. Any expectation by anti-death penalty groups and those generally opposed to wrongful criminal convictions based on “junk science” that the Commission could, or would, conclude the forensic arson evidence upon which Willingham was convicted and executed was flawed have been dealt a serious setback. It will not happen under the “in the light most favorable” standard.