Anti-Empathy, Anti-Judge Goes on Trial
(CBS/AP)
But neither side adequately explained the concept of "empathy" in judging nor offered specific examples of its use or abuse in court.
Enter Sharon Keller. She is Chief Justice of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and White House tribunes and Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats should have repeated her awful story like a mantra during the Sotomayor fight. Justice Keller is a living, breathing, cold-hearted example of what happens when judges act in the absence of empathy or compassion or real-life common sense. She is the Anti-Judge and her inhumane conduct helps prove just how unjust our system can be when judges do not employ at least some degree of empathy.
In 2007, Justice Keller—known locally to some as "Justice Killer"—quite literally closed the courthouse doors on a man who was facing imminent execution. She told his lawyers that she was going home and would not accept an after-hours appeal brief even though the brief clearly had merit. "We close at 5," Justice Keller coldly told a court official that afternoon-- and then without an apparent remorse or regret she went home to meet a repairman at her house.
Bad enough, right? But it gets worse. Judge Keller did not tell her colleagues on the appeals court that lawyers for Michael Richard were attempting to get a stay of his execution. After-hours filings happen all the time in death penalty cases—even Supreme Court Justices and their clerks often stay late. And the appeal for Richard was not tardy because of the laziness of the lawyers—it was a little tardy because Richard's attorneys were scrambling to apply a brand-new, last-minute Supreme Court ruling on lethal injection procedures (in another case) that gave them new grounds for an appeal.
None of this mattered in the end for Richard. Because Keller blocked his appeal, because she hid the appeal from her colleagues, because she put bureaucratic form over legal substance, Richard was executed before all of his legal issues had been resolved. Even in Texas, which has an atrocious record of protecting the rights of condemned prisoners, and even for a guy like Richard who was found guilty twice, this is beyond reason. And that explains why Keller will go on trial herself today for judicial misconduct.
A mini-trial is slated to begin today in San Antonio. The State wants to know whether Keller breached her duties as a judge and, if so, whether she should lose her job or simply be sanctioned or admonished.
The factual findings of this trial—which ought to last a few days—will be sent to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Keller is unrepentant. She blames defense lawyers for not getting the brief to her in time and she says that Richard got plenty of due process over the years. The judge's accusers say it was unconscionable for her not to stay an extra 20 minutes late to accept an appeal she knew was on its way. They say this is just the latest example of an unacceptable level of hostility toward capital defendants.
Texas has an opportunity through this process to take a stand against decades of heartless, unfair treatment of criminal defendants. There is simply no place in the criminal justice system for a judge who could ever think it was appropriate to close off an appeal like Richard's because it was going to be 20 minutes late.
We like to think that our judges should be automatons, completely devoid of human empathy and compassion, but the truth is we need them in the end to be just decent human beings. That's why even if you won't admit it to yourself you'd rather have Justice Sotomayor as your judge than Justice Keller.
(CBS)
Popular in Politics
- Obama prom pictures surface
- Obama: America at a "crossroads" in fighting terrorism
- Drones, Gitmo part of broad Obama counterterrorism speech
- Lawmakers push to punish sexual offenders in the military
- Issa: IRS' Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights
- Boehner calls out Obama administration's "arrogance of power" 83 Comments
- IRS' Lerner: "I have not done anything wrong" 951 Comments
- Protester heckles Obama during counterterrorism speech Play Video
Your story is a shining example, however not the example you would like for it to be. When will CBS figure out that we want to hear the news, not the opinions of its staff our administrators. Stop treating us like we are your children and you can present any disingenuous tales you wish to us and we will just believe and applaud your work.
We want the facts. Present the entire story, don't try to bait us with bits and pieces of a news story if you really want to write a piece on your OPINION of Judge Sotomayer. The people who watch and read the news, do so to be informed. We are not stupid people. We don't need you or any of your colleagues to point out the bad or good guys, we can do that on our own once we are presented with the full picture.
When will the news media get back to reporting just the news and letting the public come to it's OWN opinions?
Save the breath and wasted space. 1. Appeals have a system whereby persons can docket out of time or file an appeal late--everyone knows the procedure. Even if the info only just now was revealed to the lawyers, the case and the circumstances was not, they should have filed a motion to stay the execution and based it on the pending new information, WEEKS ago. The untold story is the shambles of most court systems and of public defenders who milk cases based on groundless reasons to keep the fires burning NOT for the sake of the person they represent, but because as long as they work on a case, they can charge for that case.
Judges know the deal--she stopped their gravy train, which was being paid at the tax payer's expense. and you will not find too many people sympathetic to the idea that a twice convicted killer did not get to extend his sickening stay on earth any longer. The judge will probably be found not guilty and the attorneys can look forward to many cold days in their respective districts and court systems as other judges see how they retaliate when they can't keep getting money from the public coffers to pretend to actually help their "clients".
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/nyregion/10dna.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion
"Jeffrey Deskovic heard a TV talk show host announce President Obama?s nominee for the Supreme Court last month, and his mind raced. That name; he remembered that name.
He emerged from bed and riffled through the boxes of motions, appeals and letters he had accumulated in the 16 years he spent in a New York prison for a rape and murder he did not commit.
And there it was, a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, dated April 26, 2000, and barely two pages long. It was co-written by Sonia Sotomayor.
[. . .]
Imprisoned at the age of 16 for the killing of a high school classmate, Mr. Deskovic, now 35, filed a habeas corpus petition in 1997 in Federal District Court contesting his conviction. The court denied the request because the paperwork had arrived four days late. Mr. Deskovic and one of his lawyers ? who he said had been misinformed about the deadline for filing ? appealed the decision to the federal appellate court on which Ms. Sotomayor sat.
Ms. Sotomayor, along with the other judge on the panel, ruled that the lawyer?s mistake did not ?rise to the level of an extraordinary circumstance? that would compel them to forgive the delay. There was no need to look at the evidence that Mr. Deskovic insisted would affirm his innocence, they said.
Mr. Deskovic spent six more years behind bars, until DNA found in the victim not only cleared him, but connected another man to the crime."