John Bradley won’t get confirmed by the Senate as the Chair of the Forensic Science Commission, but that’s all right. The purpose for which he was put on the Commission by Rick Perry is about to be fulfilled.
Perry, who refused to block Cameron Todd Willingham’s lethal injection in 2004, appointed Williamson County prosecutor John Bradley to take over the forensics commission and the Willingham case in 2009, just days before the panel was to hear a fire expert’s critical report of the original investigation.
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Once in charge, Bradley took steps to slow down the panel’s work and has pushed members to find there was no misconduct by fire investigators in the original 1991 investigation.
The forensics panel is scheduled to meet April 14-15 to consider its final report on the case. GOP Sen. Bob Deuell, chairman of the nominations committee, told The Associated Press that he has been holding Bradley’s doomed nomination without a Senate vote in part to allow him to preside over that meeting.
Bradley doesn’t have enough Senate support for confirmation, and he’d be immediately forced out of his job on the forensics panel if he was called up for a vote and lost, Deuell said. If there is no vote, Bradley serves until the legislative session ends in May.
“Right now he knows he’ll get busted,” Deuell said. “The thinking is even from most of his critics, if not all, is that he needs to chair that meeting. We don’t want a new person to have to start over like he did.”
This critic thinks Bradley deserves the public dope slap that a failed confirmation vote would represent. So does Sen. Rodney Ellis, who was quoted as such later in the story. That said, I do understand Sen. Deuell’s position, and let’s be honest, if the Willingham case remained unresolved Rick Perry would just name another hatchet man to finish the job. Hell, for all we know he’d name David Bradley to fill that slot as well. Nobody has any illusions about Bradley’s role on the Commission, and nobody with any integrity will accept a whitewash from him, regardless of what the record will say. Let’s get this over with and move on. Thanks to Grits for the link.