Free Republic

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- The top criminal judge in Texas was spared her job but still punished Friday by a state panel that reprimanded embattled Judge Sharon Keller for turning away a death-row inmate's late appeal hours before his 2007 execution. Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, had faced removal from the bench. But the State Commission on Judicial Conduct instead slapped her with a "public warning," one of the least severe sanctions at its disposal. The resolution to what became a three-year saga seemed to leave neither side satisfied. Keller sought nothing short of...