Posted on 10/02/2009 1:55:00 AM PDT by exhaustguy
"AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday defended his removal of three commissioners looking into whether the state used bad science to execute an innocent man, suggesting too much was being made of his move. On Wednesday, Perry decided to replace three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, including its chairman, just two days before it conducted a hearing to examine the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. The new chairman canceled the meeting."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
I read the article. I’m no Perry fan, but this looks like a one-sided hit piece on him.
For instance, they don’t say squat about the convicted arsonist, the circumstances of the fire, his trial, his motive, and so forth. That’s not truth-seeking journalism, it’s a journalist writing to further an agenda (anti-capital punishment, anti-Perry, what have you).
Nor do they explore the *facts* of the board members that were dismissed. Perry says their term is up. Is it? This is easy to determine, it’s a fact you can look up, but the “journalist” doesn’t bother.
You should read the New Yorker piece regarding the fire. That is the background for this.
The response by one of the original arson investigators and the DA to the earlier reports has been pathetic at best.
According to the New Yorker article, the most damning thing is a test done in Florida to determine if an arson had occurred there. The house next to the one that was burned was also intentionally burned without accelerant - only the couch was lit on fire. The resulting forsenic evidence matched both the Florida house and the house in Texas. This showed that many of the conclusions regarding the use of an accelerant were incorrect.
If you are going to execute a man, you had better be sure that a crime has actually occurred. That is what the panel is trying to determine now. When you are trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict as a public official you should not be doing things like this. It is common sense.
The facts of the case are immaterial to them. All they want is a case they can flog with to the usual lefty crowd.
Granted, some of the evidence gathering over the years is flawed and there was one case I'm keenly aware of where a man was freed from death row because another guy in custody confessed to the crime (and why did the first guy confess to the crime, I keep asking, if he knows he didn't do it?).
So, while I'd like to see the evidence be more iron-clad in some DP cases, I'm not going to use them as somehow proof of a flawed system or conclude that DP should be abolished, which is the goal of the anti-DP crowd.
What they want in every DP state is another Illinois where the Republican governor called for a moratorium and then eventually commuted every DP sentence. They got their victory there and are intent on doing that in every state.
The libs hate TX period. They have been coming down here for years trying to find some case where we executed some scum wrongly. They are also trying to get homosexual marriage here. We are being invaded. This is all political and the move to punish TX for not representing the Marxist line.
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