“We close at 5 pm.” Four words were all it took for Texas Judge Sharon Keller to extinguish the last hopes of death row inmate Michael Richard. He was executed hours later.
Scrambling to file a motion delaying his 2007 execution by lethal injection, Richard’s defense lawyers say they ran into computer problems and called over to Keller’s courthouse to ask it stay open a little later.
Her refusal prompted outrage, and today the judge will find herself in the dock as she goes before a professional conduct panel to face claims that her decision was arbitrary and inappropriate.
The charges stem from Sept. 25, 2007, when the US Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of death by lethal injection — the method by which Richard was to be executed at 6pm that evening.
His lawyers say they began drawing up motions asking for the execution to be delayed until the Supreme Court made a decision but started having computer problems shortly before 5pm.
Richard’s attorneys said Keller refused keep the courthouse open, though doing so is common practice in death penalty cases. The lawyers’ attempts to obtain an emergency stay from the Supreme Court was rejected because they had not first obtained a ruling on halting the execution from a lower court.
Keller’s decision will be reviewed by a conduct panel presided over by Judge David Berchelman and other peers in the Texas judiciary. It is expected to review the case for three or four days and has the power to dismiss the claims against Keller, sanction her, or remove her from the bench.
Richard, who had been convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering a woman 20 years earlier, was administered a legal injection and pronounced dead at 8:23pm that evening.
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct concluded that Keller had engaged in “willful or persistent conduct that cast public discredit on the judiciary” and multiple newspaper editorials condemned her actions.
Keller has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing, saying earlier this year: “By the time he was executed, Richard had two trials, two direct appeals, two state habeas corpus proceedings and three federal habeas corpus hearings and motions.”
Texas state Legislator Lou Burnam disagreed: “It’s one thing for a banker to close shop at five o’clock sharp. But a public official who stands between a human being and the death chamber must be held to a higher standard,” he said.
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