Dec
14
Written by:
Mark Lavergne
12/14/2009 5:34 PM
Gov.
Rick Perry today announced a new appointment to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, the agency recently at the center of a controversy regarding the 2004 execution of capital murder convict
Cameron Todd Willingham.
Now, Perry has appointed the chief medical examiner for Tarrant, Denton, Johnson, and Parker Counties:
Nizam Peerwani. He is a member of the National Association of Medical Examiners, the Texas Medical Association, the Tarrant County Medical Society, and, interestingly, Amnesty International, a global organization known for its opposition to the death penalty.
Earlier this fall Perry, within a month's time, appointed four new members to the commission, saying their predecessors' terms were up. Critics claimed that the new appointments were an attempt to delay or derail new information on the 1991 murder case -- information that, anti-death penalty critics claimed, call into question Willingham's guilt. Law enforcement officials, eyewitnesses, and others from the City of Corsicana who were directly involved in the Willingham trial -- including his defense attorney
David Martin -- have maintained that he did in fact set fire to his home, killing his and his wife's three children.