Mixed Opinions of a Judge Accused of Misconduct

From the New York Times:

If Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of Texas’ highest criminal court, has ever doubted her judgment, she has not shown it.

In 1998, Judge Keller wrote the opinion rejecting a new trial for Roy Criner, a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA tests after his trial showed that it was not his semen in the victim.

“We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent,” she later told the television news program “Frontline.” “We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important.”

Gov. George W. Bush eventually pardoned Mr. Criner.

To Judge Keller’s detractors, the Criner decision highlighted what they see as her strong and habitual bias for the prosecution. Many Texas defense lawyers describe her as a law-and-order zealot who rejects most appeals out of hand. Her defenders argue that she has been fair and impartial, though unabashedly conservative, in her interpretation of the law.

Now, Judge Keller is again defending her actions, this time in a judicial misconduct case that could end her career.

Seventeen months ago, lawyers for a man facing execution sought extra time to file a last-minute appeal. Judge Keller refused to delay the closing of her clerk’s office past 5 p.m., even though late filings are common on the day of a scheduled execution. The man, Michael Richard, was put to death by lethal injection a few hours later.

Based on that case, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct last month charged Judge Keller with incompetence, violating her duties and casting public discredit on the judiciary. Judge Keller, who was first elected chief judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000, faces a public trial and could be forced off the bench.

Her lawyer insists that she did nothing wrong and that she was being blamed for the mistakes of the defendant’s lawyers and court staff.

Judge Keller, whose current term runs through 2012, rarely grants interviews and did not respond to requests for comment. But others are taking up her cause.

“Sharon is a hard worker,” said Dan Hagood, a defense lawyer and longtime friend from Dallas who served as her campaign treasurer when she ran for election to the court in 1994. “She never complains, never explains.”

Judge Keller, 55, has always kept her own counsel; her colleagues at the court have given her the nickname Mother Superior because of her reserved and diligent demeanor and her devout Roman Catholic faith.

Full article here.