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Could Electronic Case Filing Have Saved Michael Richard's Life?
Law.com reports: Twenty Texas lawyers have joined in a complaint to be filed with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct against Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller for closing the CCA clerk's office at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25, preventing an inmate's attorneys from filing an emergency request to stay his execution.

Within hours after the CCA closed its doors, the state executed Michael Richard for a 1986 murder. The U.S. Supreme Court had agreed earlier in the day that Richard was executed to consider a Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees, regarding whether the lethal injection method of execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Charles "Chuck" Herring Jr., one of the attorneys who joined in filing the complaint against Keller and a partner in Austin's Herring & Irwin, said the attorneys also want to call attention to the need for the CCA to have a procedure in place to handle last-minute emergencies. He said other courts allow electronic filing of documents and questioned why the CCA does not allow it with life-and-death matters. full story

Full post as published by Legal Dockets Online on October 12, 2007 (boomark / email).