Attorneys Announce Complaint Against Appeals Judge Keller

PRESS RELEASE

October 10, 2007

Twenty attorneys from different areas of Texas announced today they would join together to file an official complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, asking that it investigate and perhaps discipline Presiding Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals for her decision to close the courthouse doors to attorneys seeking to file an emergency request to stay the execution for Michael Richard on September 25.

Judge Keller refused to allow the attorneys for Richard, scheduled to be executed on the same day, to file pleadings on his behalf, based on a grant of certiorari that very day by the U.S Supreme Court on the question of the constitutionality of lethal injunction. The attorneys had requested that the court clerk’s office remain open twenty minutes past the 5pm closing time because they had experienced computer failure in the preparation of their pleading. Judge Keller refused, even though she was not the judge assigned to the Richard case. As a result, Richard then was executed.

The attorneys will argue that Judge Keller’s actions denied Michael Richard two constitutional rights, access to the courts and due process, which led to his execution, and that her actions also brought the integrity of the Texas judiciary and of her court into disrepute and was a source of scandal to the citizens of the state.

The complaint will call upon the Commission to investigate the matter and take appropriate disciplinary action, which could even result in the removal of Judge Keller from office.

The attorneys include a number of distinguished and accomplished civil attorneys from around the state. The list also includes former State Bar President Broadus Spivey, premier criminal defense attorney Dick Deguerin, Professor and former Dean of University of Houston Law School Mike Olivas, former appellate judge Michol O’Connor, legal ethics expert and author Chuck Herring, Texas State Representative Harold Dutton, Southern Methodist Law School clinical supervisor Eliot Shavin, and former Nueces County Attorney Mike Westergren.

Jim Harrington, Director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, called Judge Keller’s actions “morally callous, shocking, and unconscionable for an appellate judge. What Judge Keller did was not about doing justice, but about taking a short cut to execute someone – an abominable act. This is also a reflection on the entire court – it’s one of the few in the land that does not allow fax or e-filings of emergency petitions like this.”

Harrington also said he would be filing a grievance with the State Bar in the next few days to revoke Judge Keller’s law license, which, if done, would have the effect of removing her from the bench.