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After Facing the Court of Public Opinion, Judge Sharon Keller Goes on Trial

By John Bringardner

"We close at five." For Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Sharon Keller, those words could end up etched on the epitaph of her career, the Texas version of "Let them eat cake." After 15 years on the bench, Keller is on the other side of the dais today in San Antonio, where she's on trial for five judicial misconduct charges stemming from her decision not to keep the CCA open after hours to accommodate the defense team for convicted killer Michael Richard, who was scheduled to be executed that night, Sept. 25, 2007. Richard was convicted for the heinous 1986 rape and murder of a Houston-area nurse and mother of seven. But on the morning of his execution, the Supreme Court agreed to review Baze v. Rees, "a Kentucky case over whether unconstitutional pain and suffering was caused by a three-drug combination used in executions -- the same lethal cocktail used in Texas," according to the AP. The decision gave Richard's lawyers at the nonprofit Texas Defender Service a chance to stay his execution. They jumped into action, cobbling together a filing that included a motion to file a writ of prohibition, a petition to file a successor writ...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 17, 2009 (boomark / email).