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| Willingham's house after the blaze |
Adopting a stronger call to action Friday, a state agency concluded its review of the Cameron Todd Willingham case by urging Texas fire officials to re-examine investigations that may have relied on arson evidence now known to be unreliable.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission also added language to its final report clarifying the role that now-discredited "arson indicators" played in Willingham's conviction on murder charges.
The commission's inquiry, focused on the arson science behind the Willingham case, was never intended to weigh the guilt or innocence of the man Texas executed in 2004.
But the report adopted Friday marked the first time a state agency has acknowledged that unreliable evidence played a role in Willingham being convicted of setting fire to his Corsicana home in 1991 and killing his three young children.
"It's a good report," said Stephen Saloom, policy director of the Innocence Project, a New York legal advocacy center that filed the Willingham complaint with the commission in 2008.
"It makes clear that the old forms of arson evidence are not reliable and need to be banished from fire investigation practices in Texas," Saloom said. "And this gives a chance for justice for all those past cases where people may have been wrongfully convicted of arson."
The report, adopted 8-0 with one member absent, will be posted on the commission's website Monday.
The final version urged the Legislature and cities to set aside enough money to ensure that fire investigators are fully trained in the ever-evolving scientific understanding of fire behavior.
The panel offered 15 other recommendations for improving fire investigations, including formal adoption of investigative standards outlined in a National Fire Protection Association document, NFPA 921: Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigation, and establishing peer review panels to examine pending arson cases.
But much of Friday's efforts were focused on whether the state fire marshal's office — whose investigator was the prosecution's star witness against Willingham — has a duty to re-examine other past investigations that may have been influenced by now-discredited investigative techniques.
"If the science changes, if the interpretation of the case changes over time, is there an obligation to inform the stakeholders and the criminal justice system? If the answer is no, then we're really in trouble," said commissioner Sarah Kerrigan, a forensic toxicologist and associate professor at Sam Houston State University.
Accredited forensic labs, when presented with evidence that a result was invalid or mistaken, are required to correct the error, inform everybody involved and fix the underlying problem, added commissioner Nizam Peerwani, chief medical examiner of Tarrant County.
Agencies that engage in interpretive scientific analysis, including fire investigators, should follow a similar guideline, Peerwani said.
Commissioners agreed, adding language to the final report urging the state fire marshal's office to develop standards to review past cases and correct any errors discovered.
Commissioners also noted that neither the fire marshal nor the Corsicana Fire Department notified judges or prosecutors that standards of arson investigation had improved in the years between Willingham's 1991 conviction and his 2004 execution.
In a letter to the commission last year, State Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado insisted that his agency stood by its investigator's arson finding in the Willingham case. On Thursday, commissioners responded by calling that an "untenable position in light of advances in fire science."
Maldonado issued a statement Friday noting that he had not yet seen the final report but that "the State Fire Marshal's Office is always open to improving the quality of its fire investigations. We will look to the final report for guidance and direction in achieving that goal."
The commission's report included a sample list of post-fire conditions once thought to be arson indicators, or evidence that fires had been intentionally set using an accelerant or combustible liquid. Scientists, largely by setting test fires over the past two decades, have concluded that the same conditions are present in many natural and accidental fires.
Indicators singled out by the commission included:
• V patterns: Former Deputy Fire Marshal Manuel Vasquez testified that a V-pattern in Willingham's hallway indicated that he had started one of three fires there. "Scientists now know that the 'V-pattern' simply points to where something was burning at some stage of the fire, not necessarily the origin," the report says.
• Pour patterns: Vasquez testified that burn marks on the floor of Willingham's house could only have been caused by a poured liquid accelerant. But such patterns often have other causes, including synthetic carpeting, radiant heat, smoldering debris and flashover, the near-simultaneous ignition of every burnable item in a room.
• Spalling: Brown discoloration on Willingham's porch proved that a liquid accelerant had been squirted there, Vasquez testified. But the report said that "while spalling may be caused by burning accelerant, it is more often caused by sustained heat from other sources."
The commission may have another opportunity to revisit the Willingham case to examine whether investigators engaged in professional negligence in their investigation and testimony about the fatal fire. The attorney general's office has been asked to determine whether state law disallows such an inquiry. That opinion is due by July 30.
Source: statesman.com, April 15, 2011
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