Judge Keller Responds

Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller responds to the charges filed against her by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Of particular interest, her response contains additional facts she claims were omitted in the commission's Notice of Formal Proceedings, including:

• Details of the executed man's crime from an Texas Attorney General media advisory.
• An assertion that the defendant "was not seeking on September 25, 2007, 'to avoid execution.' ... He merely wanted Texas not to 'include chemicals that are unnecessary to the effectuation of his death.'"
• The fact that the defendant "insisted on a trial but did not testify."
• A claim that the motion to stay the execution based on a new Supreme Court decision "was a simple document" that could have been filed as a four-sentence handwritten paragraph.
• The statement that "Judge Keller did not have a duty to do anything other than what she did, which was to answer a question about whether the clerk's office closes at 5 p.m."

Something else I found interesting: The judge says she is being denied her right to counsel because the Commission on Judicial Conduct won't pay her legal bills and the Texas Ethics Commission won't rule on whether she could get free or reduced-fee legal services from the hotshot lawyer who's defending her--especially when the CJC is paying an outside law firm $1 to prosecute her case.

(Note that another high ranking judge got in trouble for not reporting discounted legal services as campaign contributions.)

This puts Judge Keller between a rock and a hard place: "either defend herself pro se or risk a financially ruinous legal bill to defend against these charges which are without merit."