Word: courting
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Soft-spoken and a devout Christian, Judge Sharon Keller presides as chief justice of Texas' highest criminal court. She's also known as "Sharon Killer" by her opponents, who are going to see her in court next week on charges of judicial misconduct. They charge that Keller refused a condemned man a last-minute appeal in 2007. Now she faces a trial in a San Antonio courtroom that could lead to her removal and will certainly focus wide attention on Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty...
Keller finds herself at this pass because of a four-word sentence she uttered on Sept. 25, 2007: "We close at 5." According to a newspaper interview with Keller in October 2007 and pretrial testimony last year, she said those words to Ed Marty, general counsel for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA). As the court's logistics officer, Marty had called the judge at the behest of lawyers for Michael Richard, 49, who had been on death row for two decades and whose execution was scheduled for that evening. The lawyers were allegedly having computer trouble and problems...
...outcry followed. "This execution proceeded because the highest criminal court couldn't be bothered to stay an extra 20 minutes on the night of an execution," Andrea Keilen, executive director of Texas Defender Service, told ABC News in 2007. Not only did Texas defense attorneys quickly file complaints with the state's judicial oversight commission, in an unprecedented move, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined the filing. Newspapers across the state and nation weighed in with scathing editorials, and anti-death penalty campaigns went on the attack. The Texas Moratorium Network set up sharonkiller.com...
...year and a half later, in February, Keller was charged by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct with "willful and persistent" failure to follow the CCA's protocols for last-minute appeals and for bringing public discredit on the court. Opponents say her actions displayed a dogmatic affinity for the death penalty. But her supporters, some of whom do not share her conservative views, contend that she was following the rules and was not responsible for the shortcomings of defense attorneys. They also point to Keller's work doubling the number of public defenders' offices in Texas and boosting their...
Scheungraber denies the allegations that he ordered the killings, saying he was rebuilding a nearby bridge at the time. But at the end of an 11-month trial, the court handed down a life sentence, convicting him of 10 counts of murder and one of attempted murder. "This was about revenge," said Judge Manfred Goetzl, adding that Scheungraber was the only officer present at the time of the killings. "He wasn't someone who allowed an important matter to be taken out of his hands...