Word: kellers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...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...
...master - a judge named by the state supreme court for the occasion - has been appointed to preside over the fact-finding trial. San Antonio District Judge David Berchelman Jr., a former member of the CCA, can either recommend to the commission that the charges be dismissed or that Judge Keller be reprimanded or even removed from office by the state supreme court...
...access, while a group of newspaper execs has been looking into the legality of banding together to do the same. News outlets are selling software, merchandise, club memberships - anything that people are more willing to pay for than, well, news. (Watch an interview with New York Times editor Bill Keller...