Word: kellers
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...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...
Though she handily won her elections to the bench, Keller exhibited little interest in politics during college, friends say. The bright daughter of a Dallas entrepreneur and famed restaurateur "Cactus" Jack Keller, she excelled in school and studied philosophy at Rice, then law at Southern Methodist University. But 1994, while working as an appellate attorney in the Dallas prosecutor's office, she ran for a spot on the CCA and, thanks to a Republican landslide on the coattails of George W. Bush, won her seat. In her second term, she ran successfully for the top slot, the court's presiding...
...genteel-looking Keller is expected to put up a fight, even though she has been silent thus far on the upcoming trial. In a written response to the charges, she derided the defense attorneys' claims that computer trouble delayed their paperwork: "It did not take a computer to prepare and timely file ... it could have been handwritten and the court would have accepted it as Judge Keller informed the Commission...
...will also defend herself by discussing the man she is accused of wronging: the executed Michael Richard. Richard had a long legal history and a criminal record that evokes little sympathy. "By the time he was executed," Keller wrote in her response to the charges, "Richard had two trials, two direct appeals (including to the United States Supreme Court), two state habeas corpus proceedings and three federal habeas corpus hearings or motions." She added that the charge against her that Richard was not accorded access to open courts or the right to be heard "is patently without merit...
...handling of Richard's appeals process is what is being contested by Keller's opponents. Richard won a new trial from the CCA because the alleged abuse he had suffered at the hands of his father had not been considered in his first trial, according to the appellate record. But Richard was convicted again in 1995 and once again given the death penalty, even after his mother and sister were allowed to testify about the alleged abuse during the punishment phase of the trial. Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, his lawyers appealed...