AUSTIN (October 11, 2009)--Gov. Rick Perry’s office is refusing to release documents related to an arson expert’s report that was sent to the governor less than 90 minutes before the execution of Central Texas death row inmate Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted on evidence the report found faulty.

Perry’s office said its comments or analyses of an attorney's attempt to stop the execution based on the arson expert's opinion are not public records refused to release the documents sought by the Houston Chronicle.

The newspaper said it tried unsuccessfully to obtain the documents showing whether Perry reviewed or if his staff discussed a fax of the arson expert's report that was sent to the governor just 88 minutes before Willingham's execution in February 2004.

The report said investigators had "made errors" and relied on discredited techniques. Willingham's attorney also had argued in a letter to Perry before the execution that the condemned man did not set the fatal fire that killed his three small children in 1991.

On Friday, Perry continued a shakeup of the state panel that was about to review a report concluding a faulty arson investigation led to Willingham’s execution.

The governor announced Friday that a criminal defense attorney from Fort Worth will fill a board vacancy and that one medical examiner is replacing another.

Attorney Lance Evans succeeds Samuel Bassett, who was told last week he wouldn't be reappointed to the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

Randall Frost of Boerne, the chief medical examiner for Bexar County, was named to replace Sridhar Natarajan, a medical examiner from Lubbock.

Just days before the commission was to have met to review the report, Perry removed the panel’s chairman and two members.

That forced the commission to cancel the meeting.

The state-funded report says that an arson investigation that led to Willingham’s execution was poorly conducted and couldn't be supported by fire science or investigative standards.

Willingham was executed in 2004, but maintained his innocence to the end, saying in his final statement he was “an innocent man, convicted of crime I did not commit.”

“I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do,” he said.

The report released in August from an independent expert hired by the state mirrors the 2006 findings of fire investigation experts hired by the Innocence Project.

Fire scientist Craig Beyler wrote in the new report requested by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, "the investigators had poor understandings of fire science."

Forensic Science Commission chairman Sam Bassett had said the final report is likely to be issued in the first half of 2010, but the shakeup likely changes the timetable.

The Forensic Science Commission agreed in August 2008 to review investigators' conclusions that Willingham set the fire at his family's home in Corsicana two days before Christmas in 1991.

Trial evidence suggested an accelerant was used to start the deadly fire, but the Innocence Project says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.

It’s the first investigation to be conducted by the commission, created in 2005 to look into allegations of forensic misconduct.

Willingham was arrested and charged on Jan. 8, 1992, two weeks after the three girls died.

Evidence at his trial showed an accelerant, believed to be charcoal lighter fluid, was used to ignite the floors, a front threshold to the house and on a concrete porch, and neighbors testified they saw Willingham outdoors even before the flames engulfed his home.

Witnesses said he showed no grief over the deaths, but instead was upset about his car and a dartboard

One of the prosecutors called Willingham a sociopath whose children were an impediment to his lifestyle.

Willingham insisted in a death row interview that he was innocent and that his trial was a joke.

Willingham initially told investigators the fire started as he and his children slept, but Corsicana investigators found evidence the fire was set deliberately with a flammable liquid.

Amber Louis Kuykendall, 2, and twins Karmon Diane Willingham, 1, and Kameron Marie Willingham, 1, died in the fire.

Willingham's wife, who was out shopping when the fire broke out, initially supported her husband's version that a lantern must have fallen, igniting the fire, but Stacy Kuykendall later told the Corsicana Daily Sun she no longer believed her former husband's story.