Litigation

Report: Removal of Texas Judge Not Needed

By Peter Hardin

Texas Judge Sharon Keller, charged with judicial misconduct arising from her handling of a last-minute death row appeal, should not lose her job,  a special master who presided over her ethics trial has recommended.

Judge Keller, who presides over the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, deserves no punishment “beyond the public humiliation she has surely suffered,” Judge David Berchelmann wrote in his report, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle.

The death row inmate involved in the case was executed Sept. 25, 2007, after Judge Keller refused to keep her courthouse doors open. Judge Berchelman wrote that her conduct “was not exemplary,” according to the New York Times, and he called it “highly questionable,” but said Judge Keller “did not engage in conduct so egregious that she should be removed from office.”

Judge Berchelmann criticized lawyers for the death row inmate at the Texas Defender Service, saying “The majority of the problems involving the…execution were the responsibility of the T.D.S.”

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct will decide later on whether Judge Keller should be disciplined.

Judge Keller’s lawyer said the special master’s opinion “basically exonerates her.” But Andrea Keilin, executive director for Texas Defender Service, said the inmate would have been spared execution “but for the violation of the (Court of Criminal Appeals’) own execution day protocol and the decision to refuse to allow [the inmate] to file his pleading after five o’clock.”

Lawyers from the Texas Defender Service had sought to file a last-minute appeal on the day the U.S. Supreme Court suspended lethal injection as a means of execution. You can read earlier posts about Judge Keller’s case by clicking here.

Full post as published by The Gavel on January 21, 2010 (boomark / email).