Execution Watch

Perry's fall partner continues chokehold on forensics panel

blogadmin | 29 January, 2010 15:36

I've been following by live webcast the meeting of the Texas Forensic Science Commission today in Harlingen. If commissioners were meeting any farther from Austin, they'd be in Mexico.

How ironic that Texans must rely on a webcast by the New York City-based Innocence Project to follow the suddenly far-flung activities of a state commission that, until recently, has operated in an accessible manner.

Gov. Rick Perry's fall partner, new commission Chairman John Bradley, continues to use a combination of legerdemain and hubris to hijack the commission, thwart the Legislature's intent, and prevent completion of the commission's investigation into the science that led to the execution of Todd Willingham for arson-murder convictions in a fire that may not have been deliberately set.

 Photo of Todd Willingham's headstone

Texas put Todd Willingham to death six years ago for arson-murder convictions that were recently called into                                             question by a state panel's probe that has been stalled by Gov. Perry's machinations.


Ignoring the unfinished business of the Willingham case, Bradley spent several hours today browbeating commissioners into approving a set of rules he wrote without their input. As if to confirm the process was delaying tactic, he admitted the commission does not have rulemaking authority and referred to the rules as "policies and procedures" that are "not even enforceable on ourselves."


Bradley's performance evinces a lack of respect for commissioners, taxpayers, legislators, and sham-science victims that is so broad in impact, it approaches the criminal.

I wonder what it will take for the Texas Legislature to call Perry's surrogate to task for his outrageous actions and get the commission back to its important work?

Perry may be in a tough primary fight, but that does not confer on him new constitutional powers to, in effect, replace the head of a commission with his co-conspirator in order to override the authority of the legislative branch and prevent voters from hearing the likely but politically inconvenient conclusion that an innocent man was executed on his watch.

On the other hand, if Perry isn't challenged effectively, those powers are, de facto, his.

 

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Orwell would appreciate judge's approach to letting fellow judge off the hook

blogadmin | 20 January, 2010 18:54

The ruling today in the ethics case against Judge Sharon Keller reads like an Orwellian primer for closing ranks.

In a stunning display of Newspeak, a hearing judge declared it mostly the fault of uber-attorney David Dow's team that their client was executed as scheduled in 2007, and not the fault of Texas' most senior criminal court judge, who blocked them from filing a motion to spare his life because it would have been minutes late.

                                                       Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (2009).

                                                                 Sharon Keller

In his decision, District Court Judge Judge David Berchelmann Jr. of San Antonio threw out state Judicial Conduct Commision charges against the still-defiant Keller, finding she did not break any rules -- even unwritten ones.

Berchelmann was the special master for hearings last summer that examined the commission's accusations that Keller's behavior in refusing to remain open late for a motion to stay the execution of Michael Richard "constitutes incompetence in the performance of duties of office" and "casts public discredit on the judiciary."

After taking weeks of testimony under advisement, Berchelmann proved himself a master translator of English to Newspeak, the language from George Orwell's 1984, in which a totalitarian government mandates a new tongue that promotes the expression of approved thoughts and lacks the capacity to communicate forbidden ones.

The strong language of the commission in charging Keller proved no match for Berchelmann's mastery of Newspeak:

Keller's refusal to keep the court open so lawyers could plead for Richard's life was, at worst, a "highly questionable" behavior. The incompetence and discredit the commission alleged are really a mild disagreement between Keller and colleagues, told philosophically they have "valid reasons" if they are "not proud" of her actions.

Such a translation might impress Orwell himself. But the futuristic elucidation by Berchelmann -- a former member of the Court of Criminal Appeals -- cannot alter the subtext that roils like algae beneath the surface: Judges, like cops, are susceptible to closing ranks behind a colleague under fire, even when the criticism is well deserved.

His wet kiss for Keller where a less polite gesture is demanded adds to the landfill-sized heap of evidence that public servants at every phase of the criminal justice system must be scrutinized constantly for evidence they are unethically putting their small, personal interests above the overarching interests of jutice.

 

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