Click here to send an email to Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg urging her to ask the judge to withdraw the execution date for David Powell now set for June 15, 2010.

Already more than 400 people have signed the online petition and sent an email to Rosemary Lehmberg. You can sign your name and send the letter as it is written, you can edit the letter to add or change some of the words, or you can delete all the current text and write a letter in your own words.

David Powell is on death row in Texas for the murder of a police officer, Ralph Ablanedo, committed 32 years ago in the state capital, Austin. Twenty-seven years old at the time of the crime, David Powell is now 59. More than 70 countries have legislated to abolish the death penalty since David Powell was first sent to death row.

The Travis County District Attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, has requested that the trial court set an execution date for David Lee Powell, and the court has now set David’s execution for June 15, 2010. DA Lehmberg has the authority to ask the court to withdraw the warrant, but she will not do so without the public letting her know LOUD AND CLEAR that she has done the wrong thing. Tell her your disappointment that she is missing an opportunity to take the most progressive county in Texas, Travis County, into the future by withdrawing David’s execution date. She knows that there are appropriate alternatives to the death penalty. Let her know you do too. And tell her – if you are a voter in Austin and Travis County, that you will never vote for her again if she goes through with this terrible deed.

David was sentenced to death because prosecutors convinced the jury that he would pose a future danger to society, but he has had only minor non-violent infractions in the 32 years he has been on death row, such as having an extra pair of socks and shorts in his cell; playing his radio too loudly; or not making his bed before 6am.

To learn more about the case of David Powell, visit letdavidlive.org or watch a 30 minute documentary, divided into four parts on YouTube: Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four.

Watch David Powell expressing remorse in Part Four of Film.

Video from Keyetv.com about setting of execution date, including statement by Scott Cobb of Texas Moratorium Network.

Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, may soon be suspended from office according to the Procedural Rules for Removal or Retirement of Judges, if Travis County Attorney David Escamilla files misdemeanor charges in connection with Keller’s failure to report millions of dollars in income and property to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Keller could be suspended by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct upon the filing of misdemeanor charges if the charges relate to her “official duties”. The annual personal financial disclosure and reporting requirements are part of most elected officials’ duties, which means a violation may very well be considered “official misconduct,” though some may argue it is not.

If she is suspended, the hearing and formal proceedings against Keller by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in the separate matter of her actions on the day of the execution of Michael Richard would continue on schedule but she would be suspended from performing her duties as a judge.

Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast reported that he talked to David Escamilla, Travis County Attorney. Escamilla’s office is responsible for filing charges in misdemeanor cases in Travis County. Henson wrote:

I called Escamilla to ask about the status of the criminal complaint, which has now been sitting at his office for more than a year. Escamilla had not yet read the TEC opinion himself, declaring that he’d asked two of his prosecutors to review it and report back to him tomorrow with a recommendation how to proceed.

Escamilla and I spoke both on and off the record. On the record, he said he hadn’t moved forward before now because he’d been been waiting for the Ethics Commission to complete its investigation. He said he would give “great weight” to the Ethics Commissions findings of fact and conclusions of law, which would have a “great influence” on whether his office elected to proceed with prosecution. Escamilla was particularly impressed that the TEC identified 13 different alleged Class B misdemeanor violations and said the remarkable volume of violations might also be a factor in whether to go forward.

Click here to sign a petition urging the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to recommend Sharon Keller be removed from office.

Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, should be suspended from office pending the outcome of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct proceedings against her. She faces a public hearing on June 18, but she should be suspended before the hearing. If she is suspended, the hearing and formal proceedings would continue on schedule but she would be suspended from performing her duties as judge.

Click here to sign a petition urging the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to recommend Sharon Keller be removed from office.

She has already been fined $100,000 dollars by the Texas Ethics Commission for 13 violations equivalent to misdemeanors. She may have committed more violations but the statute of limitations has run on some of her past behavior. She may soon face criminal charges, according to a post on Grits for Breakfast.

Rule 15(b) of the Procedural Rules for Removal or Retirement of Judges on the website of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct allows the Commission to request that the Supreme Court of Texas suspend a judge if  a sworn complaint is filed.

Keller could also be suspended under Rule 15(a) if Travis County Attorney David Escamilla files criminal charges against her.

Here is the relevant text of the Commission rules:

RULE 15. SUSPENSION OF A JUDGE
(a) Any judge may be suspended from office with or without pay by the Commission immediately upon being indicted by a state or federal grand jury for a felony offense or charged with a misdemeanor involving official misconduct. However, the suspended judge
has the right to a post-suspension hearing to demonstrate that continued service would not
jeopardize the interests of parties involved in court proceedings over which the judge would
preside nor impair public confidence in the judiciary. A written request for a post-suspension
hearing must be filed with the Commission within 30 days from receipt of the Order of
Suspension. Within 30 days from the receipt of a request, a hearing will be scheduled before
one or more members or the executive director of the Commission as designated by the
Chairman of the Commission. The person or persons designated will report findings and
make recommendations, and within 60 days from the close of the hearing, the Commission
shall notify the judge whether the suspension will be continued, terminated, or modified.

(b) Upon the filing with the Commission of a sworn complaint charging a person holding
such office with willful or persistent violation of rules promulgated by the Supreme Court of
Texas, incompetence in performing the duties of office, willful violation of the Code of
Judicial Conduct, or willful and persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper
performance of his duties or casts public discredit upon the judiciary or the administration of
justice, the Commission, after giving the person notice and an opportunity to appear and be
heard before the Commission (under Rule 6), may recommend to the Supreme Court the
suspension of such person from office. 

It is time for the Commission to recommend that the Texas Supreme Court suspends Sharon Keller until the formal proceedings are complete and the Commission votes to either dismiss the case, issue a public censure, or recommend to the Supreme Court that Keller be permanently removed from office.

Now that she has been fined $100,000, we should expect to see a round of newspaper editorials coming soon saying she should be removed from the bench.

The Commission charged Keller in the Amended Notice of Formal Proceedings with 1) “willful or persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of her duties as presiding judge”, 2) “willful or persistent conduct that casts public discredit on the judiciary or the administration of justice”, 3) “incompetence in the performance of duties of office”.

Those are the exact reasons given in Rule 15b for suspending a judge. The Commission should immediately begin the process to recommend that the Texas Supreme Court suspends Keller. The proceedings against her including the June 18 public hearing will continue, but in the meantime she should not exercise the powers of her office as a judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The other option that could have achieved Keller’s suspension was for the Texas House to vote to impeach her, as Rep Lon Burnam tried to do when he filed a resolution to start that process. If she had been impeached by the House, she would have been automatically suspended pending the outcome of her Senate trial.

Post written by Scott Cobb

The Texas Tribune has a database of Texas prisons and prisoners that includes a list of people on Texas death row and where they are housed. 12 death row prisoners are listed as being housed in the Jester IV Psychiatric Unit. One of the 12 is Cesar Fierro, who is one of the people on Texas death row who is mostly likely innocent of the crime for which he has been sentenced to death. Compounding the tragedy of his having been sentenced to death despite his innocence is that being on death row for 30 years has had a devastating impact on his mental health.

Read more about Cesar Fierro on this website: http://www.cesarfierro.info/summary.htm

The following is excerpted from: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/files/ushrn/images/linkfiles/NACDL_Statement_to_Committee_3-13-06[2].pdf:

C. The Effects of Lengthy Incarceration and Inhumane Conditions on Death Row Inmates: A Case Study

Prolonged incarceration on death row, particularly under the conditions described above,23 has devastating psychological effects on condemned prisoners – particularly those who are mentally ill. Indeed, the torturous effects of “death row phenomenon” — that is, the psychological impact of a lengthy stay on death row — have been widely noted by jurists and scholars over the last three decades.24

It is both necessary and appropriate for nations to provide adequate procedural safeguards to ensure condemned inmates receive full and fair appellate review of their convictions and sentences. Nonetheless, prolonged incarceration on death row amid unendurable conditions of confinement gives rise to violations of Articles 7 and 10 of the ICCPR.25 The case of César Roberto Fierro Reyna, a Mexican national on Texas’ death row, provides a particularly disturbing example of the destructive psychological effects of extended solitary confinement on death row.26

César Roberto has been under a sentence of death since February 27, 1980. 27 He has been scheduled for execution on fourteen separate occasions, coming within days of execution before receiving court-ordered stays on six different occasions. According to the prison’s classification records, Mr. Fierro contacted the prison’s psychiatric department for the first time on May 15, 1986, stating that he was hearing voices and he might injure himself.

As the years passed, Mr. Fierro’s mental condition continued to deteriorate. On December 28, 1999, Mr. Fierro learned that his mother had died four days earlier. In a grievance submitted to the prison on January 25, 2000, he wrote that he made an appointment with the psychiatrist because he “went down emotionally and was feeling real bad[.]” The prison sent a psychiatrist or a psychologist to his cell, but Mr. Fierro requested a private consultation. He was told that only outwardly psychotic prisoners are allowed private psychiatric consultations, and hence his request was refused. In the grievance, Mr. Fierro wrote:

I don’t look sick and I can do things as you can see by this grievance, but I hear the voices at the same time and I can do things I don’t want to do and that’s what I would like to avoid completely.

He reiterated his request for a private meeting with a psychiatrist, and asked that the psychiatrist “get my old medication back or whatever he deems appropriate.” Id. The prison responded that its records indicated that Mr. Fierro had been seen by the unit psychiatrist, and that the psychiatrist had found no indication that Mr. Fierro was in need of further treatment.

Mr. Fierro’s attorneys as well as reporters have observed a marked deterioration in Mr. Fierro’s mental health over the years of his incarceration on death row. Until March 1999, he was able to communicate with his attorneys in a regular and fairly rational manner. From that point forward, however, Mr. Fierro’s letters to his attorneys became increasingly bizarre and irrational. He lost a great deal of weight. He became convinced that his attorneys were conspiring against him.
One of the hundreds of irrational letters he sent to his attorneys included the following message:

NO ACCESS TO GRIEVANCES. STOLEN PENS AND STAMPS. LIMITED ACCESS TO SAME INK AND STAMPS. NO TYLENOLS. NO FLOSS. SCARED OF DENTIST BECAUSE A DRILLED HOLE OR SOMETHING AND CAVITIES. NO MEDICAL. INCOMPETENT EMPLOYEES. FORGOT, GUM/TOOTH BLEEDS. NO FAIR HEARINGS, CONFISCATION OF DOCUMENTS AND ORCHASTRATED [sic} CASES. NO RULES. NO MAIL. PSYCHOLOGICAL SUICIDE BY HYPNOSIS OR OTHER INSINUATED. ALSO THE ATTEMPT TO CONFUSE AND MANIPULATE, ALSO CUTS, GASSING AND BEATING SO FAR IN THIS RUN.

What is particularly tragic about Mr. Fierro’s case is that he may actually be innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Numerous media reports have described the miscarriage of justice that led to his conviction.28 Although a Texas court has found that his confession was coerced by the El Paso police,29 and his former prosecutor has urged the courts to grant him a new trial, he remains on death row. As of February 27, 2006, he has spent twenty-six years awaiting his execution for a crime he may not have committed.

And here is an excerpt from a 2005 article from Texas Lawyer about the Fierro case:

David Dow says he had heard rumors from other condemned clients that Fierro had “gone stark raving mad.” During Fierro’s decades on death row, his mother had died, his brother had died, his wife had divorced him and his daughter had stopped visiting him. Gradually, he refused to speak with his lawyers, returning unopened letters from Dow, as well Richard Burr and Jean Terranova, who also represented Fierro in his
habeas proceedings.

“He wouldn’t come out of his cell for months at a time unless he was
forcibly extracted,” says Dow, a constitutional law professor at the
University of Houston Law Center and director of its Texas Innocence
Network. “He refused to shower and there were feces on his cell wall. It was
very disturbing, but I really needed to see him.”

When Dow finally visited Fierro in late 2004, Dow grew shocked at his
client’s transformation. When Fierro was sent to death row in 1980, Dow says
he was a soft-spoken, slightly overweight man in his mid-20s who was highly
respectful of his lawyers and the process, which he felt would set him free.
“When I saw him last year, he had long, stringy hair and a strong wind could
have blown him over,” says Dow who has recently written “Executed on a
Technicality,” a book about his death-penalty practice that includes a
chapter on Fierro. “[Fierro] told me he was on a hunger strike but then
asked for food.

and

Dow says he is always hopeful about his clients’ chances for success, but seldom optimistic; the facts, the law, the percentages are just too stacked against them. But in 1991, after he was first appointed to represent Fierro
on his second federal writ of habeas corpus, he felt Fierro would be his
first death-penalty client to be exonerated.

Dow raised numerous constitutional objections in his unsuccessful writ, but
the issue that has always driven the habeas litigation was the defensive
theory that Fierro’s confession had been coerced, Dow says. What had yet to
be proved was a key fact about the coercion: that the El Paso police knew
that the Juarez police were wrongfully holding Fierro’s parents in custody
and then exploited that fact to force him to confess.

The facts that are known are as follows: On Feb. 27, 1979, border patrol
agents discovered the body of Nicholas Castanon, a taxicab driver who had
been shot in the back of the head and dumped in an El Paso park. Sometime
after the shooting, eyewitnesses identified two men exiting the taxi in
Juarez * one a driver, the other the passenger. Based partly on these
identifications, two suspects, neither of whom were Fierro, were arrested
for capital murder, but the El Paso District Attorney’s Office refused to
indict them.

The case turned cold until five months later when 16-year-old Gerardo Olague
presented himself to the El Paso police and implicated Fierro in the
homicide. In his July 31, 1979, statement to police, Olague said Fierro had
joined him when Olague hailed a cab to drive him home. During the ride,
Fiero surprised Olague when Fierro suddenly shot the cab driver in the neck.
After dumping the body in a park, Fierro shot the cabbie again. Olague said
he remained with Fierro over the next few weeks, traveling into the interior
of Mexico with him and back to Juarez and El Paso because he was fearful
Fierro might kill him. In a pang of conscience, he finally came forward and
decided to tell the police what he knew.

None of the original eyewitnesses identified Fierro as either of the men who
exited the cab, and the police recovered no physical evidence to connect
Fierro to the crime. Instead, the police hoped to secure a confession from
Fierro. But first they had to find him.

According to the testimony of El Paso police Detective Al Medrano, Olague
led Medrano and a Juarez municipal police commander named Jorge Palacios to
a house in Juarez to point out where Fierro lived with his parents. No one,
however, knocked on the door to see if Fierro was home.

On the following day, Aug. 1, Medrano received a 5 a.m. phone call from
Palacios who invited Medrano to meet him for breakfast in Juarez so Palacios
could disclose the information he had learned about Fierro’s whereabouts.
Medrano testified that it was only during this breakfast meeting that
Palacios revealed he had interviewed Fierro’s mother at her home and she
admitted that her son was already incarcerated in the El Paso County Jail.

Shortly after the Juarez breakfast, Medrano retrieved Fierro, who was being
held for a probation violation, and began his interrogation. Medrano
testified he did not know whether Fierro’s parents were in Juarez police
custody; he only knew they had been contacted by the Juarez police * and
told Fierro as much during the interrogation. Nonetheless, Fierro grew
anxious about his mother, and said he would only confess if he knew his
parents were all right. To ease his fear, Medrano said he phoned Palacios,
who spoke with Fierro. After their conversation, which Medrano said he
didn’t hear, Fierro confessed to the murder.

In Fierro’s Defense

The defense offered a different version of the facts, which it developed
during its pre-trial motion to suppress the confession.

Fierro’s mother testified that she and her husband were arrested after the
Juarez police seized two letters from her home, one of which was written by
Fierro from the El Paso County jail. Fierro’s stepfather testified that the
Juarez police threatened to torture him while in custody, placing an
electric cattle prod near his genitals. His mother further testified she and
her husband were released only after they were told her son had confessed.

Cesar then testified that Medrano had shown him the two letters (which the
defense suggested Palacios had given Medrano during their breakfast meeting)
to convince him that his parents were in Juarez police custody. Fearful of
his parents’ incarceration and possible torture, Fierro says he only
confessed so they would be released.

Despite defense arguments that both police departments colluded to coerce
Fierro’s false confession, the trial court refused to suppress the
confession, which became a pivotal piece of evidence at trial. Prosecutors
used it to corroborate the other thread of evidence tying Fierro into the
murder: the testimony of Olague, which the defense argued was riddled with
contradictions and revealed Olague to be more than an unwitting witness to
murder.

At trial, Olague admitted. that in the hours before the murder, he committed
his first-ever burglary, breaking into a car and stealing a CB radio, which
he said he and Fierro later pawned. Oddly, he identified one of the jurors
as the pawnbroker, which she wasn’t. In his police statement, Olague claimed
he had only known Fierro for two weeks prior to the murder; at trial,
however, he testified that Fierro and his brother had forced him to commit
around 10 burglaries during the several months prior to the CB radio theft.
Asked how many burglaries he had committed, he estimated around 40, though
he testified he had only been arrested for one of them. To explain away a
discrepancy between his police statement and his trial testimony, Olague
admitted he had “psychological problems.”

Prosecutor Weiser recognized that the state’s case raised the issue of
whether or not Olague was an accomplice to murder. Weiser asked the judge to
instruct the jury that Texas law required the independent corroboration of
an accomplice’s testimony to support a conviction. To do otherwise, he said,
“would be committing reversible error.” The judge gave the instruction.
In his closing arguments, Weiser urged the jury to focus on the confession,
which he contended was voluntary because the El Paso police were not
complicit in whatever actions the Juarez police might have taken. He argued
that even if the jury didn’t believe Olague’s testimony, it would still have
to convict Fierro based on his own words. On Feb. 12, 1980, the jury, after
reviewing the confession during its deliberations, found Fierro guilty of
capital murder and later sentenced him to death.

It took another 14 years for Dow and his defense team to uncover proof that
Fierro’s conviction may have rested on a lie.

Cesar Fierro is still on Texas Death Row.

Here is the text of the order from the Texas Ethics Commission in the matter of Judge Sharon Keller. She was ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 for failing to disclose at least $3.8 million in income and property on two annual financial statements.

Click here to join Texas Moratorium Network’s Facebook page or for more information on Sharon Keller, visit www.sharonkiller.com.

Texas Ethics Commission Order Fining Judge Sharon Keller $100,000

More from the Austin-American Statesman:

According to the ethics commission ruling, Keller failed to list eight Dallas-area properties on financial disclosure statements required of all elected state officials in 2006 and 2007. Appraisal districts valued six of those properties at almost $2.9 million combined in 2007. One property was valued at $750,000 in 2008, and the other property wasn’t appraised, the commission said.

Keller’s statements also omitted at least $183,000 in outside income, her ownership interest in a Dallas business, 20 certificates of deposit, one money market fund and her participation on five corporate boards and leadership positions, the commission said in an order signed Wednesday but made public Friday.

Keller had revised both reports last year to include the omissions.

The commission gave Keller until Aug. 10 to pay the fine, imposed for violating six sections of the Texas Government Code that regulate what information officeholders must disclose to the public.

Keller, however, will challenge the ruling and the fine, which her lawyer termed “excessive,” by filing a lawsuit in Travis County District Court within the next 30 business days — the established method of appealing ethics commission decisions.

“Judge Keller voluntarily amended her financial disclosures shortly after she was made aware of the matter, and her conduct was not intentional but rather the product of her father’s acquisition and management of properties without any input from the judge,” lawyer Ed Shack said Friday.

Keller’s father is Jack Keller, a Dallas entrepreneur and property owner famous for the Keller’s Drive-in burger joints in Dallas.

News of Keller’s financial form omissions, revealed in March 2009 by The Dallas Morning News, came at a sensitive time for Keller.

A month earlier, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct charged Keller with violating her duty as a judge by refusing to allow an after-hours appeal for death row inmate Michael Richard on Sept. 25, 2007. Richard was executed later that night.

In addition to denying that her actions closed the court to Richard’s legal team, Keller asked the judicial conduct commission to pay for her defense lawyers, arguing that she risked a “financially ruinous legal bill.”

The commission, a 13-member agency that investigates allegations of wrongdoing against all Texas judges, refused.

A month after making the request, Keller amended her disclosure forms to add several million dollars in assets, providing ammunition for her critics, including Texans for Public Justice, a left-of-center watchdog group that filed the ethics commission complaint against the judge.