U.S. judge on trial for refusing to keep court open after 5pm to hear last-minute death row appeal



A top U.S. judge who refused to keep her courthouse open for an extra 20 minutes to hear a death row appeal is now facing a special trial that could end her career.

'We close at 5pm,' Texas judge Sharon Keller said in 2007, extinguishing last-minute hopes of death row inmate Michael Richard. He was executed four hours later.

But her refusal to wait 20 minutes as lawyers frantically tried to file a motion delaying the defendant's execution prompted outrage among Keller's peers.

Now two years later, the judge is facing five judicial misconduct charges, including denying the rights of a condemned man.



Nicknamed 'Sharon Killer' among critics for her tough-on-crime reputation, Keller is the highest-ranking judge in Texas to be put on trial by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.



Judge Sharon Keller refused to keep a court open past 5pm to hear an appeal to save the life of Michael Richard, who was executed hours later



The judge overseeing the trial will submit a report to the commission, which could dismiss the charges, issue a censure or suggest Keller be removed from the bench.

Keller, a Republican who has served on the court since 1994, has not spoken publicly since being charged in February over claims that her 2007 decision was arbitrary and inappropriate.



Her attorney, Chip Babcock, said the widely repeated narrative of what happened the day Richard was executed was inaccurate.

'The truth is, the court was never closed to them,' Mr Babcock said. 'They always had the ability to file.'

There's a lot more to the story than late paperwork, he said.

The charges stem from September 25, 2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of death by lethal injection - the method by which Richard was to be executed at 6:00 pm that evening.

Richard's lawyers immediately began drawing up motions asking for the execution to be delayed until the Supreme Court had made a decision.



But the defendant's legal team was hampered by computer problems shortly before 5pm.

Richard's attorneys claimed Keller refused to keep the courthouse open, although doing so was common practice in death penalty cases.



The lawyers' attempts to obtain an emergency stay from the Supreme Court was rejected because they had not first obtained a ruling on halting the execution from a lower court.

Richard, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a mother of seven 20 years earlier, was administered a legal injection and pronounced dead at 8.23pm.

Keller has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing, saying earlier this year: 'By the time he was executed, Richard had two trials, two direct appeals, two state habeas corpus proceedings and three federal habeas corpus hearings and motions.'

Texas state legislator Lou Burnam disagreed.

'It's one thing for a banker to close shop at five o'clock sharp. But a public official who stands between a human being and the death chamber must be held to a higher standard.'

Richard was the 26th person to be executed in Texas in 2007, but even in a state that accounted for around half of all executions in the U.S. in 2008, the case caused an outcry.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct concluded that Keller had engaged in 'willful or persistent conduct that cast public discredit on the judiciary' and multiple newspaper editorials condemned her actions.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 effectively suspended the death penalty, but it was reinstated just four years later and 36 states still have the punishment on their books. Polling suggests two-thirds of the population still supports executions.