More on the Ethics Complaint Against Judge Keller

Mary Alice Robbins has, "20 Lawyers Join in Complaint Over Execution Stay Thwarted by Early Office Closing," at Texas Lawyer's website.

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), said at a news conference Wednesday that Richard's attorneys had to file a motion to stay in the CCA before they could file a motion to stay with the Supreme Court. Harrington said that Keller's decision short-circuited the effort to get Richard's motion before the high court.

"This is the kind of conduct that really shocks people's morality," Harrington said.

"Justice should be fair and competent, and here it was not," said Charles "Chuck" Herring Jr., who joined Harrington at the news conference. "The result was a man died on a day he should have lived," said Herring, one of the attorneys who joined in filing the complaint against Keller and a partner in Austin's Herring & Irwin.

Harrington says the TCRP planned to file the complaint with the judicial conduct commission Thursday.

Broadus Spivey, a former State Bar of Texas president and a partner in Austin's Spivey & Grigg, is another of the 20 attorneys joining in filing the complaint. Spivey says in an interview that he was appalled when he read newspaper reports that Keller closed the court's office before Richard's attorneys could file the motion for a stay.

"It shows an amazing lack of sensitivity to constitutional rights," Spivey says. "No matter how guilty a person is, give him a right to be heard."

In their law practices, Herring and Spivey represent clients in cases involving lawyers' professional responsibility.

Harrington said he plans to file a grievance with the State Bar of Texas on Thursday, asking the Bar to revoke Keller's law license.

CCA Judge Cheryl Johnson declines comment on the complaint. Johnson says she was the judge assigned to handle late motions in Richard's case but she was not told that his attorneys had requested the court to remain open past 5 p.m. "I was out of the loop," she says.

There is extensive coverage in yesterday's post.