The clip of my last week’s testimony in favor of HR 480 Judge Sharon “killer” Keller‘s impeachment from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals at the Texas House Committee on Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence has been posted online. Our group at the capitol included Scott Cobb, Gloria Rubac, Crystal Wilson, Terri Been (sister of Jeff Wood), Lawrence Foster (grandfather of Kenneth Foster,jr) and Kenneth Foster Sr (father of Kenneth). I joined later at the hearing to give my testimony to the committee on Sharon Keller.
On Sept 25, 2007, Keller said “We close at 5″ and refused to accept an appeal from the attorneys of Michael Richard, who was scheduled for execution at 6pm that night. The U.S. Supreme Court had decided at around 10am that morning to accept a case from Kentucky (Baze v Rees) in order to rule on the constitutionality of the method of lethal injection as a means of carrying out executions. Richards attorneys had to rewrite their appeal to incorporate the issue of the constitutionality of lethal injection. The had a computer problem and called the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to ask for an extra 20 minutes to submit their re-written appeal. Keller said “We close at 5″ and refused. Richard was executed later that night after the U.S. Supreme Court was unable to issue a stay, because there had been no final decision at the state-level court. If Keller had not refused to accept the appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court could have issued a stay. Richard was the last person executed in the United States before the start of a de facto moratorium on executions pending the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Baze case.
Here is a short video I made for one of my classes. It includes some clips from a 2007 protest we did at her office.