keller file 6 why the last-minute appeal


By Chuck Lindell | Tuesday, June 2, 2009,

Twenty years after Michael Richard was convicted of raping and 
killing a Hockley mother of seven, his lawyers were scrambling to 
file an appeal with his execution only hours away.

Why the last-minute rush?

On the morning of Sept. 25, 2007 — execution day for Richard — the 
U.S. Supreme Court announced it would determine whether lethal 
injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

Figuring (correctly, it turns out) that executions would halt until 
the high court ruled, Richard’s lawyers with the Texas Defender 
Service began drafting a stay of execution request — dropping a 
longshot appeal that claimed Richard should not be executed because 
he was mentally disabled.
One of the lawyers, David Dow, has said computer server problems in 
his Houston office did not allow him to e-mail his work to the Texas 
Defender Service’s Austin office until late in the afternoon. Faced 
with making almost a dozen copies of the 100-page document before the 
court’s 5 p.m. closing, a paralegal telephoned the Court of Criminal 
Appeals to request more time. The request was denied.
Later that night, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Richard’s request for 
a stay of execution, most likely because it was not properly filed in 
— and reviewed by — a lower court.

That conclusion is based on what happened two days after Richard’s 
execution, when Texas death row inmate Carlton Turner (pictured left) 
was set for execution. Turner also was represented by the Texas 
Defender Service, and his brief was almost identical to Richard’s brief.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to stop Turner’s 
execution, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay — effectively 
putting the death penalty on hiatus until the court ruled six months 
later that lethal injection was not overly cruel punishment.
Last February, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct filed 
misconduct charges against the Texas court’s leader, Presiding Judge 
Sharon Keller, for denying the Texas Defender Service’s request for 
more time to file Richard’s briefs. A special trial on the charges 
begins Aug. 17. I’ll get into the specific charges later, but first…

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/
investigative/entries/2009/06/02/keller_files_6_why_the_lastmin.ht