Posted on 08/18/2009 5:37:10 AM PDT by chuck_the_tv_out
SAN ANTONIO, Aug. 17 -- The trial of a Texas judge charged with refusing to hear a last-minute appeal in a death penalty case got under way Monday in San Antonio.
The Texas Commission on Judicial Misconduct charged Chief Justice Sharon Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in February with bringing “public discredit” on the Texas justice system in the case of Michael Wayne Richard. He was executed Sept. 25, 2007, after Keller refused to take the appeal and failed to refer his lawyers to the judge assigned to the case.
Richard was executed the same day the U.S. Supreme Court said it would rule on whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court announcement resulted in postponement of most executions in the United States -- including two in Texas.
Richard’s lawyers had asked for more time to file an appeal because computer problems prevented them from getting papers to the court clerk’s office by 5 p.m. but Keller declined to keep the office open late, the commission found.
Richard was executed for the 1986 shooting of 53-year-old Marguerite Lucille Dixon, a nurse and mother of seven who was robbed, raped and shot in her home.
Keller’s court produces more executions than any other state court, The New York Times reported.
I wonder if we can get her out of the court house and into the senate....
Perhaps lawyers shouldn’t make a habit of waiting to the last day to make an appeal. It appears to me that they are the ones gambling with their clients lives.
“I wonder if we can get her out of the court house and into the senate...”
My thoughts exactly!
When time is of the essence...you get yourself in gear and get to the clerk’s office. The idea that it should remain open “for you alone”....is an absurdity. The “clock” is an important part of every case. The attorneys should have given up their liquid lunch....
The guy lived too long. What is in the mind of these weenie liberals to give a crap about a rapist murderer? They have a defect in the region of the brain that discerns right and wrong.
It's nice to hear that a judge "Gets It".
The idea that they are taking her to judicial review is silly. Instead they should be starting impeachment proceedings on all of the liberal Democrat judges who do not uphold their oath to support the constitution.
Ask the defense what kind of appeal did the rapist-murderer grant the victim?
No one would spend this time and effort over a worthless White guy.
Sharon Keller is a new heroine of mine!
The lawyers for the killer said they were late because of computer problems.
That killer has been sitting on death row for a murder-rape he committed in 1986.
I think 21 years on death row was a gift of life that the victim (a Houston nurse) sure as hell didn’t get.
Natural consequences all around.
“Keller’s court produces more executions than any other state court...”
I don’t see a problem here
21 years on death row and they wait until the last minute? I’d fire that lawyer. Oh wait...!
Discredit hell, Ms Keller deserves the Noble peace prize for sticking it to the liberals against the death penalty.
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