Today's Austin American-Statesman has the editorial,"Closing time at the death chamber." It concerns the order by Chief Justice Sharon Keller to close the door at 5:00 p.m. on September 25, blocking a challenge to lethal injection by attorneys for Michael Richard.
That callous disregard shocked the world, and the international outcry may have prompted Keller’s court to temporarily halt Chi’s execution. Texas was slow to recognize that executions should be banned while the high court determines whether lethal injections violate the Eighth Amendment’s cruel-and-unusual language.
Better late than not at all. If Texas continues to execute condemned prisoners on the eve of the Supreme Court decision, it will incur the scorn of the civilized world. After the offense of Richard’s death, Texas needs to adhere to expected standards of conduct and prohibit all executions until the Supreme Court rules.
Other states are doing just that. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to stop setting execution dates until the Supreme Court decision arrives. Arguments in the Kentucky death row case are set for November. Also, Alabama’s governor issued a temporary halt to an execution last week pending the ruling from Washington.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders has, "Things to remember about executions."
This execution business is out of whack in Texas. Killing a man in the name of the state should not depend on luck or an impatient appeals judge who is more interested in when the courthouse closes than in an individual's life.
Texas has three other executions scheduled between now and Feb. 21. I can only presume that those will not be carried out. Based on the state appeals court's action in Chi's case and the Supreme Court's action in Turner's case, I hope that we have at least a de facto moratorium on executions --for a little while, anyway.
Keep in mind that the issue the Supreme Court will consider is not abolishing capital punishment, but whether one method of execution is unconstitutionally cruel.
After the court rules, Texas will be back in the killing business again, I assure you -- unless we demand that our politicians end this immoral act altogether.
It is long past time to put a stop to this insanity.
If you still have doubts about that, just remember those two names: Michael Richard and Carlton Turner. Remember, too, Judge Sharon Keller.
And as you contemplate the judge's name, also remember that members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals are elected.
Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey has, "Keller shames Texas again."
Sharon Keller, Texas' top judge on criminal matters, may have shocked much of the nation last week when she ordered a clerk not to stay open an extra 20 minutes to accept a last-minute appeal for a man on death row.
But she didn't shock those who know her.
After all, this is the same judge who nine years ago responded to DNA evidence indicating the innocence of a man who had been in prison for years on a rape charge by writing that he may have used a condom.
More on that below.
Now Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, put us on the front page of the New York Times and into the foreign press by refusing to allow the court clerk's office to stay open an extra half-hour to take the last-minute appeal of a Michael Richard, who raped and killed a Harris County mother of seven in 1986.
And:
She has shown herself capable of extraordinary mental gymnastics to avoid overturning a conviction.
Back in 1990, Roy Criner was convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl and sentenced to 99 years. She was murdered, apparently in connection with the rape, but the evidence wasn't strong enough to try Criner with the murder.
In fact, the evidence was so weak that a Beaumont appeals court ruled that "no rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt all of the essential elements of the offense charged."
The Court of Criminal Appeals, however, overruled the lower appeals court.
When DNA tests, unavailable at the time of the trial, later showed that semen found on the girl was not Criner's, both the trial judge and the Beaumont appeals court ruled he deserved
a new trial. Again, the Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed.This is when Keller came up with her "he might have worn a condom" theory, arguing that he may have raped her after she had sex with someone else.
She even callously put into a footnote that the girl "loved sex," a piece of "evidence" that was never presented to the jury nor tested under cross-examination.
As it turned out, Keller's "theory" was proved to be nonsense. After 10 years in prison, Criner was finally released when more sophisticated DNA evidence showed that the semen belonged to the rapist.
News coverage of Judge Keller's order to lock the door was first reported by Chuck Lindell in the American-Statesman, here. Peggy Fikac added new details, here, reporting in the Express-News. A Morning News editorial is here.
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