(Guest Voice) Texas Mysteries: Did ‘Perry’s Office’ Pressure Commission Chair To Drop Innocence Investigation?

Hello there, Dr. Estés here. UPDATE to the story continuing to unfold in Texas between Governor Perry and a Commission looking into facts, or lack of… surrounding a man condemned to death in Texas. A mystery within a mystery as some facts/motives surfaced by usual means, but some recently appeared from ‘invisible hands.’ To give clarity? Or to purposely muddy the waters? Correspondent here is our TMV GUEST VOICE, Mr. Elijah Sweete.

Update: Did Perry’s Office Pressure Commission
Chair To Drop Innocence Investigation?
By Elijah Sweete

The Chicago Tribune and Ft. Worth Star-Telegram both report that just months prior to his dismissal, along with three other members of the nine member Texas Forensic Science Commission, former Commission Chair, Samuel Bassett, felt he was being pressured to drop the investigation into the possible innocence of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was executed in 2004 in Texas.

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1678389.html

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1680691.html

Bassett said he was twice called to meetings with top attorneys from the Governor’s office. He was told that they were displeased with the course of the investigation. Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, Bassett said, “I was surprised that they were involving themselves in the commission’s decision-making.” He added, “I did feel some pressure from them, yes. There’s no question about that.” After the meetings, staff from general counsel’s office began attending the commission’s meetings.

Bassett told the Star-Telegram that the Governor’s General Counsel questioned whether the innocence investigation was something the commission should be doing. Bassett, interviewed by the Star-Telegram said that there were “some fairly intense questions about why the commission was conducting these investigations,” but that they “never explicitly said you’ve got to stop this investigation.”

A spokesperson for the Governor’s office responded “the governor’s office and the governor do not micromanage the work of the boards and commissions.” The governor’s office later admitted that the meetings took place and that Bassett was “asked” why the commission was reviewing the Willingham case.

Chairman Bassett determined that the commission’s investigation was appropriate, and proceeded with it. Within months Gov. Perry dismissed and replaced him in spite of letters from other commission members recommending that he be kept in place. http://www.star-telegram.com/448/story/1668527.html. In an AP interview, a prosecutor who served on the commission and who wrote one of the letters to Gov. Perry said of Bassett, “Sam is not an ideologue. He’s a straightforward guy, a straight shooter…He didn’t let any political agendas get in the way.”

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

• A mysterious confession affidavit has surfaced. The affidavit appears suspect. It is a multiple hearsay account, someone told someone who told someone who signed an affidavit. The players in the multiple hearsay include Willingham’s ex-wife and one of her relatives. It is inconsistent with proper jail procedure, allegedly coming from a jail visit. Except for attorneys, jailhouse visits are routinely monitored or recorded, particularly in a situation involving a capital murder. No tape recording or law enforcement report confirming the contents of the affidavit have been released.
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• Perry’s displeasure with the commission’s work may not have been limited to the Willingham case. The commission had retained an expert to review the work of a Texas state serologist in a different suspected wrongful conviction case. It had discussed possibly making surprise inspections of state labs to assure quality control protocols were being followed and was set to begin a series of round tables about whether forensic methods in Texas were science based.
•
• Perry’s office has refused to release information on its execution review though the Governor received a report questioning the science of the arson investigation just prior to Willingham’s execution. The report sent to Perry was prepared by an Austin arson expert, Gerald Hurst, who has a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge University. Perry’s office says the execution review materials are not public records, though the Governor’s office, in the past, released such materials as public records under George W. Bush
•
• Interviewed on WBAP radio, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) called Perry’s actions in replacing four commissioners just as the commission was about to review evidence in the Willingham case covering up. “I just think the governor made a mistake in trying to ramrod a covering-up of what might be more evidence for the future.”

• Debra Medina (R-TX), also challenging Perry for the Republican nomination, rebuked Perry in unequivocal terms. “If the governor cared about justice, he’d work hard to ensure that the panel’s work is completed in all due haste, that all the evidence is considered.” And, later, “This constant changing of the guard when he doesn’t like the findings is more evidence that the governor behaves more and more like a tyrant, ‘off with their heads’ when people don’t agree with him.”

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CODA
A Lost Story about Seeing, from Dr.E.
The photo above is of an ancient river bed along the Paluxy River in Glen Rose Texas. This area is in the middle of a State Park, famous for dinosaur tracks. Some Texans note that what doesn’t show up in the tourist brochures as much as the dinosaur tracks, is that ancient human tracks were also discovered here (as you see above). The human tracks leading in different directions, are in the same geologic formation layers as the dino tracks, and also on the same bedding plane, and in some cases overlapping the dinosaur tracks…

giving reason to measure far more carefully the ways dinosaurs and humans shared the same small milieu, influencing each others’ environs in ways that were not ‘on the surface’ but in underbrush and under the river for eons…

The early explorers, archeologists, anthropologists without aerial or depth sensor equipment for penetrating views, didnt know and often couldnt even imagine ‘what lay beneath,’ until they traveled there first person and went into the brush to see the evidences and their relationship to other evidences, precisely.