By ELISE HU
KVUE News

Protestors visited the Austin home of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals presiding judge Sharon Keller Tuesday night, as a decision she made in late September continues to draw a flurry of judicial complaints.

Click here for larger video

On September 25, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection. As the issue is pending, every scheduled execution nationwide has been put on hold.

Except for one.

Convicted killer Michael Richard was set to die the same day the high court set its docket. His attorneys filed an appeal to Keller’s court, but didn’t get the filings in until 5:20pm. Keller refused to keep the court open, saying “we close at five.”

“A man was executed that shouldn’t have been executed that night,” said Scott Cobb, who led the Tuesday protest. “He certainly was guilty, from everything we know about this case. But even the guilty are protected under the United States constitution.”

Other judges who were working late Sept. 25 said they would have reviewed the post-deadline appeal.

The protest is accompanied by an additional judicial complaint, signed now by more than 1,200 Texans. Lawmakers, lawyers and advocacy groups have filed separate judicial complaints against Keller. It’s up to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to decide whether Keller is reprimanded.

“She has violated the public trust that the people of Texas put into her when we elected her and she’s also damaged the integrity of the entire Texas judicial system,” Cobb said.

Keller, who was first elected in 1994 as a tough-on-crime Republican, did not comment for this story. Questions were directed to Judge Tom Price, whose office didn’t return KVUE’s calls as of Tuesday evening.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that after he was told that Sharon Keller had refused to accept an appeal from Michael Richard’s lawyers, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office gave them six minutes to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court or else the execution would begin.

Mark White, former Texas governor and former Texas Attorney General, is highly critical of Keller, Perry and Abbott in the Richard case. He says that Perry could have issued a 30-day stay of execution after Keller refused to stay open an extra 20 minutes to accept Richard’s appeal. As reported in the Chronicle:

White said Abbott should have stopped the execution himself or asked Gov. Rick Perry to institute a 30-day stay. White said Keller also should have allowed Richard to file an appeal.

White said that as governor he always made sure he could stop an execution right up to the last minute.

“When there was an execution pending, I had an open line to the execution chamber and the attorney general was there so Texas would never look like we were ghoulish, uncaring,” White said.

and

White said even if the state ultimately executed Richard, he had a right to have his appeals heard because that creates a fundamental citizen trust in the court system.

“That court of criminal appeals, that attorney general and that governor failed to halt one of the most egregious breaches of equity in the courts that I’ve ever known,” White said.

Anyone can sign on to a judicial complaint against Keller by clicking here.

The Austin American Statesman is reporting today that another group has filed a judicial complaint against Sharon Keller. In addition, so far 1055 people have signed on to a complaint to be filed on Nov 6 that is being organized by TMN. Any member of the general public who is outraged at Keller’s behavior can sign on to the TMN complaint.

Link:

The state’s largest organization of criminal defense lawyers filed an ethics complaint Friday against Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

By denying an after-hours appeal for death row inmate Michael Richard last month, Keller destroyed public confidence in the legal system and discredited the Texas judiciary, according to the complaint by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

The letter of complaint to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, signed by President Craig Jett of Dallas on behalf of the organization’s 2,800 members, was approved 53-2 by the group’s board Thursday.

Similar complaints have been filed by the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, three legislators and the Austin-based Texas Civil Rights Project.