On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry dismissed three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, including the chairperson.

His timing was extremely suspicious, to say the least.

The commission was set to hear testimony today from an arson expert it had hired, Craig L. Beyler, who reviewed the “expert” arson testimony used in 1992 to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of killing his three children by setting their house on fire. In a detailed report (PDF), Beyler recently criticized the “expert” arson opinions used to convict Willingham as "nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation." Beyler’s conclusions, which echo the findings of eight forensic arson specialists who have looked at the case, make it abundantly clear that Willingham, executed by the State of Texas in 2004 under Gov. Perry’s watch, was almost certainly innocent.

The governor had compelling information back in 2004 that Willingham’s conviction was based on junk science, but he ignored it and allowed the execution to go forward. Last month, he expressed confidence that Willingham was guilty and disparaged Beyler and the other experts who have reached a different, science-based conclusion.

Then on Wednesday, he announced he was replacing three of the commission’s members, and chose a Texas prosecutor as the new chairperson. This change delays Beyler's testimony and any other expert findings from his investigation until after the upcoming gubernatorial election.

Gov. Perry said that the change was “business as usual.” Unfortunately, his words ring all too true. Willingham is not the first likely innocent person executed by the State of Texas. Others include Carlos De Luna and Ruben Cantu. But the state has never acknowledged any of these tragic mistakes.

Business as usual, all right.

— By Matt Simpson, Policy Strategist, ACLU of Texas and Christopher Hill, State Strategies Coodinator, ACLU Capital Punishment Project

On Monday, Ohio's execution team was unable to find a suitable vein in Romell Broom's arm so it could not inject poison into his body and put an end to his life. The failed attempts took so long that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland finally gave Broom a reprieve until next week. Ohio has not done well with lethal injections.

Although the United States Supreme Court ruled in Baze v. Rees that Kentucky's three-drug cocktail did not create a substantial risk of causing unnecessary pain, the fact of the matter is that the lethal injection process is fraught with problems.

One big problem is finding a suitable vein. The Broom case demonstrates this, as do a number of others. After Angel Diaz was executed in Florida in December of 2006, an autopsy showed that the chemicals burned through his soft tissue indicating that the needles went through his vein rather than in his vein. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush instituted a moratorium to find out why the Diaz execution went so wrong.

Six years earlier, Florida had problems executing Bennie Demps by lethal injection because the execution team had difficulties finding a suitable vein. Demps claimed that he was "butchered" and he was bleeding "profusely" before the lethal drugs were administered. According to the warden, a "surgical procedure" had to be performed to find a suitable vein.

Botched executions in the quest to find a suitable vein transcends location, gender and infamy. Ricky Ray Rector made national news in 1992 when Arkansas governor and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton left the campaign trail to ensure Rector's execution took place. The execution took 55 minutes because a suitable vein could not be found. In 2000, Arkansas had a problem finding a vein to insert into the arm of Christina Riggs. The team finally put the lethal needles in her wrists.

In Georgia, the execution team could not find veins for Jose High in 2001, John Hightower in 2007, or Curtis Osborne in 2008. Texas's problems include at least two inmates assisting the team with finding usable veins. In 1998, Texas executed Joseph Cannon. His vein collapsed and the needle came out during his execution causing Cannon to shout "it's come undone."

Execution teams come up with many excuses about the trouble they have. They say that suitable veins are hard to find in a person with a history of intravenous drug use. They also say that it is difficult to place needles in the arms of overweight inmates. Whatever the excuses, the inability to find a suitable vein creates an excruciating experience for the condemned, and sometimes the witnesses.

The fact of the matter is that there are no suitable veins. There is no humane way to end a person's life. When ruling Nebraska's electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment, Judge Connolly said "[w]e recognize the temptation to make the prisoner suffer, just as the prisoner made an innocent victim suffer. But it is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty without practicing it." The only way we can punish cruelty without practicing it is to abolish capital punishment.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ordered a federal district court judge (PDF) to "receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis's] innocence." A grant of an original writ of habeas corpus has not been granted by the court in 50 years. This order essentially gives Davis the evidentiary hearing for which he had been asking.

Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented. (PDF)

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

As soon as the St. Louis police officers knocked on the door of the home of Vera Thomas in April 1991, a parade of horribles began which culminated with her son, Reggie Clemons, being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The case is infected by police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, witnesses with motivations to give false testimony, dreadful defense lawyering and blatant racism. All of this led to no justice for Reggie Clemons.

Reggie Clemons was destined to die as soon as he walked into the police station for questioning. The police asked him about the deaths of Julie and Robin Kerry, two young white women who fell to their deaths from the Chain of Rocks Bridge in Missouri. Clemons and three people he was with that night were suspected of robbing, raping and murdering the Kerry sisters and forcing their cousin, Tom Cummins, to jump off the bridge.

At the police station, Clemons was beaten until he cried. When the police began to tape the confession, Clemons invoked his right to an attorney and said that the police had beaten him. When a second tape was made, Clemons confessed to rape because the police were preparing to beat him again. He did not confess to murder.

When he arrived at the jail to be processed, three jail employees contacted internal affairs to inform the unit about Clemons' injuries from the police beating. The abuse was so obvious that even the arraignment judge ordered that Clemons be taken to the hospital. The doctor who examined him recommended plastic surgery.

But the worst part of the beating was not the damage to his face. It was the damage the coerced confession did to his claims of innocence. Astonishingly, the confession was admitted because the trial court did not find that Clemons proved he received his injuries while in police custody,even though he had been in control of the state since he left his mother's home.

Perhaps Clemons would have been able to meet the burden of proving he was beaten by the police if his legal representation was not so inept. When his defense counsel — a husband-wife team — was retained, they did not inform Clemons that they were no longer married. The wife moved to California and did very little investigation. The husband, who was later suspended from the practice of law, did not call witnesses to explain Clemons' injuries. He also filed late and poorly drafted motions and failed to get funding for an expert.

When the husband was about to testify to his own ineffectiveness in Clemons' appeal, the prosecutor threatened the defense counsel with disciplinary action and civil lawsuits. This would not be the only time this prosecutor threatened someone who could hurt his case.

Besides the confession that was beaten out of Clemons, the main evidence against him was from two witnesses: Tom Cummins, the cousin of the Kerry sisters, and Daniel Winfrey, who was with Clemons the night of the incident. Winfrey was the only white defendant in the murders. Winfrey agreed to a plea deal of second-degree murder and is out on parole today. Clemons and his two black co-defendants did not get deals, they got death sentences.

Winfrey's sweetheart deal obviously gave him motivation to lie. His statements to others show that he followed this motivation. In a letter to his girlfriend, Winfrey claimed it was another co-defendant who came up with the idea for the robbery and never said that Clemons raped anyone. He told an inmate that he would "do anything he could to get through this thing." Winfrey also told that inmate that "no one is going to believe a bunch of niggers."

When the prosecutor learned that the defense intended to call Winfrey's cellmate to testify that Winfrey told him that he would "say anything he had to obtain a plea bargain," the prosecutor visited the cellmate with several deputy sheriffs and told him that he would make sure the inmate served a lot of time in prison if Winfrey's cellmate testified. The cellmate did not testify.

The other witness was Tom Cummins, the Kerry sisters' cousin, who was the first person arrested and charged with the murder of the Kerrys. The police become suspicious of Cummins because he claims he also fell off the bridge but survived and swam to safety. The police did not believe that Cummins could live through a 90-foot fall into rough and freezing water and come out bone dry with his hair combed and without injury. The police arrested Cummins and gave him a polygraph test, the results of which indicated deception. Cummins admitted he was responsible for the sisters falling into the water. He also changed his story a few times, including his explanation to police that he had a romantic interest in his cousin Julie. The police beat and threatened Cummins when he said he wanted a lawyer. He later settled a police brutality lawsuit with the St. Louis Police Department for $150,000. Cummins was compensated. Clemons got the death penalty.

To say that Reggie Clemons was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct would be a gross understatement. The prosecutor's transgressions in other cases have been condemned by several state and federal courts. The prosecutor altered police reports. His handwritten notes are on the original transcripts and the changes in the final reports reflect those changes. He never gave the original, unaltered transcripts to the defense, thus not providing Clemons' already woefully inadequate lawyer with all the information necessary to effectively represent him. The prosecutor's threats to Winfrey's cellmate and Clemons' lawyer in both the trial and post-conviction hearings are unconscionable.

Although Clemons was charged with rape and murder, the murder and rape cases against him were severed. The rape charge was used in the trial to help get a death sentence. After Clemons received a death sentence, the rape charges were dropped. There is no physical evidence to show that Clemons committed a rape or murder.

As if it were not enough to stack the deck against Clemons by withholding and tampering with evidence and frightening witnesses, the prosecutor went for broke during closing arguments. Even though he was instructed by the judge at the beginning of the trial to not mention serial killers during closing because it could improperly prejudice the jury, he did anyway. During the sentencing phase, the defense said that Clemons had no criminal record. In his closing argument during the sentencing phase, the prosecutor stood up and said that Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy did not have significant criminal histories either. The statement was not only untrue but defied an earlier ruling from the judge.

After all of the improper behavior by the prosecutor, he was finally held in contempt of court. But by then, it was too late for Reggie Clemons to get any justice in the courtroom.

Clemons was scheduled for execution on June 17, 2009. He received a stay from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Much that can go wrong in our capital punishment process happened to Reggie Clemons. However, this parade of horribles can end. The governor can grant him clemency. Clemons never saw justice; he should at least get a little mercy.

You can contact Missouri Governor Jay Nixon asking him to grant clemency to Reggie Clemons or appoint an independent Board of Inquiry to examine the case. For more information, visit www.justiceforreggie.com.