Flier for Lobby Day Against the Death Penalty March 24 Austin Texas

The Dallas Morning News says that Sharon Keller is going to fight the charges of misconduct and incompetence leveled at her by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. That means the public trial will take place and we will learn more about how the Court operates.

Chip Babcock, a Dallas attorney for Keller, dismissed any notion she would resign.

“It is not a real possibility,” he said.

The article goes on to say that former CCA general counsel Ed Marty resigned in part because of how he felt about his role in the controversial action not to accept the appeal, which was in violation of established court rules.

(CCA Judge Larry) Meyers acknowledged that the Richard case and resulting charges against Keller have brought significant “notoriety” to the court. But he said he was not ready to assign blame to any of his fellow judges or their employees.

While it appears the court’s long-standing policies were not followed, it remains unclear, he said, whether there was a “miscommunication” among Keller, the court’s former general counsel, the court’s chief clerk and attorneys for Richard.

He did say Marty’s decision to retire from the court last year was partly because he felt some responsibility for his role in the incident.

“I think he was ready to retire and probably also saw there was going to be a lot of controversy,” Meyers said. “It was not based on any pressure from us.”

The Houston Chronicle’s Rick Casey has some interesting commentary in his column Sunday about the shenanigans at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the day that Sharon Keller closed the court instead of accepting an appeal from a man set for execution that day. It is vital that Keller stand trial so that the public can find out more about the workings of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Vince Leibowitz, a reporter for a blog called Capitol Annex, reported this week that several judges on the state’s highest court for criminal matters want their chief judge, Sharon Keller, to resign.

Keller has been charged by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct with violations of the judicial conduct code in connection with her alleged refusal to keep the court clerk’s office open for a last-minute appeal for a death row inmate, or to inform the judge assigned to take last-minute appeals that the inmate’s lawyers were attempting to file one.

Now Keller must face the equivalent of a public trial and could lose her office.

Leibowitz quotes his source as saying the judges, at least some of whom would have to testify, feared more media scrutiny could hurt their re-election chances.

Their concern is justified. A good portion of the public might be alarmed to know, for example, that the judges acted a bit like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.”

Life rarely imitates art exactly. As usual, it was a little more complicated.

Convicted murderer Michael Wayne Richard was set to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Sept. 25, 2007. That morning the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case called Baze v. Rees challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection.

According to the formal charges by the Commission on Judicial Conduct, Judge Cathy Cochran at 11:29 a.m. e-mailed to Keller and her other colleagues an Internet link to the Kentucky Supreme Court decision that was being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The document then says that in “early afternoon” the court’s general counsel, Edward Marty, “began drafting a proposed order for the court in anticipation of Mr. Richard’s appeal based on Baze. The Honorable Judge Tom Price drafted a dissenting opinion in anticipation of Mr. Richard’s appeal and circulated the dissent to the other judges.”

What the document omits is that the judges first took an informal vote. I have it on good authority that the tally was 5-4 to turn down Richard’s appeal.

They made up their minds without waiting for the arguments of Richard’s lawyers.

David Dow, the University of Houston Law Center lawyer who headed Richard’s defense team, called the procedure “outrageous.”

“It’s the equivalent of them sticking their fingers in their ears,” he said. The judges may well have felt confident they could anticipate the arguments, and they didn’t want to wait until late in the day to begin taking up the matter.

Tuesday March 24, 2009
Texas State Capitol
11th and Congress
Austin, Texas

Every Texas legislative session since 2003, the anti-death penalty community in Texas has rallied at the Texas capitol to lobby legislators to end the death penalty. The picture above is from Lobby Day 2007. In 2009, there have already been several bills filed that we will be lobbying in favor, including a bill to end the death penalty under the Law of Parties, an abolition bill, a death penalty study commission and moratorium on executions bill, a resolution to impeach Sharon Keller and other issues.

Sponsored by Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Campaign to End the Death Penalty – Austin Chapter, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas CURE, the Student Prison Caucus, the Abolish the Death Penalty Caucus of the Texas Democratic Part, the Eye & Tooth Project: Forum Theatre on the Death Penalty, Kids Against the Death Penalty. and People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources (PODER). (If your organization would like to participate or be one of the Lobby Day sponsors, contact us at 512 961 6389 or by email to admin@texasmoratorium.org)

Please make plans to be in Austin on Tuesday, March 24, so that we can all raise our voices together against the injustice of the Texas death penalty.

Below is the tentative schedule. We will announce more details and the rooms for all events later. You do not have to attend all events.

10 AM – Noon Lobbying Training Workshop Location: University of Texas at Austin, Sanchez Building (College of Education) in the Cissy McDaniel Parker Dean’s Conference Room
located near Congress Ave and MLK, between University Avenue and the Blanton Museum of Art (just north of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum)
(We can also meet with your group before Lobby Day and train you earlier, then you can meet your legislators in the morning. Contact us if you would like us to come brief you before Lobby Day)

12:00 Break for Lunch on your own (there is a cafeteria in the Capitol)

1 PM Press Conference in the House Speaker’s Committee Room 2W.6 in the Capitol

Afternoon: Visiting legislative offices and attending committee hearings (If the committees will be hearing any death penalty related bills, we will know five days before the event.)

5:30 PM Rally on the South Steps of the Capitol (Musical Guest: Aaron Blount)

If you are coming to Lobby Day, you can call the offices of your state senator and state representative and tell them you are coming to Austin on March 24 and would like to meet with someone in their office.

In addition to the Austin training on the morning of Lobby Day, there is a Houston training session on Saturday, March 14, at S.H.A.P.E. Center, at 3903 Almeda, from 2:00 until 4:00 pm. It is organized by Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and conducted by aides to State Rep Dutton and State Rep Farrar.

You can find out who your legislators are by going to the link below and entering your address.

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us

Enter your home address.

After you click on the “Submit” button, you will see a screen with information for several elected officials. You only need to contact your State Senator and State Representative. Do not contact your U.S. Senators, U.S. Representative or your Board of Education member.

Texas U.S. Senators (DO NOT CONTACT)
U.S. Senators represent the entire state. Texas’ current U.S. Senators are Senator John Cornyn and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. See their websites for current contact information.

Texas U.S. Representative (DO NOT CONTACT)

Texas State Senator (THIS IS THE ONE YOU WANT TO CONTACT)

Texas State Representative (THIS IS THE ONE YOU WANT TO CONTACT)

Texas State Board of Education Member (DO NOT CONTACT)

Please only contact your STATE Senator and STATE representative.

Do NOT contact your U.S. Representative or your U.S. Senator (Cornyn and Huthcison).

Only call 512 area code phone numbers followed by a 463 prefix. Again, make sure you are calling a 512-463-xxxx number.

For a list of all Texas State Senators, please visit:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/Members/Members.aspx?Chamber=S

For a list of all members of the Texas House Representatives, please visit:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/Members/Members.aspx?Chamber=H

Senator Eliot Shapleigh Speaking at 2077 Lobby Day (He starts speaking at second 44 in video)

Kerry Cook speaking at 2007 Lobby Day. Kerry is an innocent person who spent 20 years on Texas Death Row.

Many people end up sentenced to death, including innocent people like Ernest Willis who was exonerated and released from Texas Death Row in 2004, not because they are the worst of the worst offenders, but because they can not afford to hire the best lawyers or even a half-way decent lawyer. A federal judge in San Antonio ordered in 2004 that Willis either be tried again or freed. That overruled a decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that kept Willis on death row. He spent 17 years on death row for a crime he did not commit before his exoneration. Keller had voted to keep Willis on death row. Now, it looks like the worst of the worst of Texas judges is facing the same problems faced by many of the people whose cases arrive at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – the high cost of hiring a decent lawyer.

Keller lives in a nice home in West Austin, which you can see in this video. As the Statesman reports she “is paid $152,500 a year. She owns several Dallas properties that provide at least $60,000 a year in rental income, and a family trust provides more than $25,000 a year, according to her financial disclosure statement for 2007.”

More from the Austin American-Statesman:

Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the state’s highest criminal court, faces several hundred thousand dollars in legal bills to fight charges that she violated her judicial duties in a 2007 death penalty case.

But the state agency that charged Keller will pay $1 for the services of Mike McKetta, a highly regarded trial and appellate attorney from Austin who will present the case against Keller during a still-unscheduled trial.

That is “monumentally unfair,” said Chip Babcock, Keller’s lawyer and a leading Texas attorney in his own right.

“I would do it for a dollar, too,” Babcock said. “McKetta and I could duke it out for just a buck. That would be fun. The problem is that if the (Texas) Ethics Commission is correct … I can’t.”

Last December, the ethics commission slapped Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht with a $29,000 fine, ruling that a $167,200 discount he received on legal fees amounted to a political contribution that exceeded the $5,000 limit on donations from law firms and from individual lawyers.