By Christy Hoppe
The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN, Texas — The nationally noted fire expert whose investigation of arson evidence called into question a 2004 Texas execution blasted Gov. Rick Perry late Wednesday, accusing the governor of “unethical” behavior in the case.
Baltimore-based Craig Beyler, hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to examine the case, said in an e-mail that the governor should not have upended the commission, which was to have heard his report just days after Perry replaced several members. He said the governor had a conflict of interest because he approved the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana.
“His failure to recuse himself is both unethical and injurious to the cause of justice,” Beyler wrote in a note intended for the Forensic Science Commission and forwarded to several reporters with his permission.
Beyler’s report found that no credible evidence existed to show Willingham intentionally set the blaze that killed his three children in a 1991 house fire. When Perry moved to replace several commission members, including the chairman, the hearing was postponed indefinitely. The new chairman has not rescheduled it.
Beyler, who is technically a contractor to a state commission, called on the new appointees to step down and seek the reinstatement of the people they replaced. He could not be reached to elaborate.
Perry’s press secretary, Allison Castle, said the comments call into question Beyler’s report and his motives.
“This statement demonstrates that he was never an objective scientist looking only at forensic facts,” Castle said. “He clearly had another agenda.”
It was an unusual turn in the case, which has drawn national attention on whether Texas might have executed an innocent man. It followed Perry’s forceful defense earlier Wednesday of Willingham’s execution.
Calling Willingham “a monster,” Perry said he harbors no doubt that Willingham, an unemployed mechanic, purposefully set fire to his home.
“This was a guy who murdered his three children, who tried to beat his wife into an abortion — person after person has stood up and testified to the facts of this case that, quite frankly, you guys aren’t covering,” Perry told reporters. “This was a bad man.”
It was his most forceful reaction yet to the controversy that has engulfed his office in recent weeks. Perry singled out Beyler as a latecomer to the case, but he did not mention the half-dozen other analysts who have looked at the Willingham case and come to the same conclusion.
Lawyers in his office also had met with the forensics chairman before his removal and challenged whether the Willingham investigation was within the small agency’s jurisdiction.
Perry said his staff and actions are consistent with asking agencies what they are working on and with replacing appointees when their terms expire.
He suggested that too much is being made of a routine process.
“This commission’s time was up; it was time for a change,” Perry said.
Of the Willingham case, he said that even if the arson evidence is discredited, he is convinced by other factors that Willingham committed the crime.
He said Beyler’s opinion stands in opposition to findings of the jury, state appeals courts and even U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the punishment.
He pointed to the fact that even Willingham’s defense attorney has said in the end he thought his client was guilty.
Perry contended that the controversy is being stirred by “nothing more than propaganda from the anti-death penalty people across this country.”
Not so, said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, which took an early interest in the case. The organization’s work already has led to dozens of DNA exonerations in Texas.
“Governor Perry still refuses to face reality and scientific fact,” Scheck said.
He said that Beyler is one of the foremost experts in the nation and that his findings echo the other independent reviews.
“Literally all of the evidence that was used to convict Willingham has been disproven — all of it,” Scheck said. “Today he is raising circumstantial evidence that even witnesses at Willingham’s trial have now debunked.”
Perry’s chief political rival, Kay Bailey Hutchison, also criticized Perry on Wednesday, accusing him of a “heavy-handed politicization of a process.”
In a written statement, her campaign said Perry’s action gives the appearance of “a cover-up” and provides “liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty.”
Copyright 2009 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS