A state ethics tri­bunal exam­in­ing the con­duct of the pre­sid­ing judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in a death penal­ty case con­clud­ed its pro­ceed­ings on August 20. Judge Sharon Keller is fac­ing a rep­ri­mand or removal from the bench for her con­duct on the day Michael Richard was exe­cut­ed in Texas on September 25, 2007. She had left the court ear­ly that day and was at home when she received a call from an assis­tant at the court say­ing that the attor­neys for Richard were request­ing more time to file an appeal based on a U.S. Supreme Court order ear­li­er that day. Despite the fact that the attor­neys had indi­cat­ed they were hav­ing com­put­er prob­lems and need­ed more time to com­plete the appeal, Judge Keller reit­er­at­ed that the court closed at 5 pm. As a result, the appeal was not ruled on by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Richard was exe­cut­ed a few hours lat­er. If the court had con­sid­ered and even denied the appeal, it is almost cer­tain that the U.S. Supreme Court would have grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion, as hap­pened in all oth­er cas­es sched­uled for exe­cu­tion from that day until April 2008 when the Court hand­ed down its deci­sion regard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tion in Baze v. Rees. Judge Keller insist­ed that she was doing her duty when she stat­ed that the clerk’s office clos­es at 5. The pre­sid­ing judge at the tri­bunal will now sub­mit a report to the state Commision on Judicial Conduct, which will decide whether sanc­tions should be imposed on Judge Keller.

Prosecuting attor­ney Mike McKetta said in clos­ing that, ​“The death penal­ty can be accept­ed in a civ­i­liza­tion only when peo­ple can have con­fi­dence that it be so care­ful­ly admin­is­tered that it pre­cludes erro­neous and premature executions.”

(P. Weber, ​“Trial of Texas judge over death-row appeal ends,” Associated Press, Aug. 21, 2009). See Arbitrariness.

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