ABSTRACT
JUDGE SHARON KELLER AND JUDICIAL FAIRNESS Texas executes more people than any other state and, in some recent years, almost as many as all of the other states combined. So one would assume that the Texas judicial system has well-established procedures for handling executions and follows those procedures scrupulously-after all, it’s an execution. But it is not always so. On September 25, 2007, Chief Judge Sharon Keller (R-Dallas) of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals received a telephone call from the court’s general counsel, Ed Marty, relating that lawyers carrying a death penalty petition on behalf of convicted murderer Michael Wayne Richard, scheduled to be executed that evening, were running late and asked that the court be held open past its regular 5pm closing time. She replied that the court closed at 5pm, the petition arrived after 5pm, the execution took place as scheduled-and then all hell broke loose.
