Sharon Keller is the Texas judge who was publicly reprimanded for closing her court on Sept. 25, 2007 and preventing lawyers from filing a last-minute appeal hours before their client was executed. Earlier this month, the top criminal judge in Texas absolved Keller of any wrongdoing. In an interview with AP immediately following that decision, Keller said she felt vindicated.
In her first extensive comments about the case, Keller was critical of the judicial conduct panel, said she believed she's been targeted all along by death penalty opponents and unfairly labeled "Killer Keller." "It's ridiculous," she said of the nickname. "People tend to know one thing about a person and think that is all there is to know. ... The 'Killer Keller' stuff, it's just not civil. It has not been pleasant at all.
Keller has not been an "easy get" for reporter interviews, but she sat down with the Texas Tribune last week, and this morning that interview was posted to the Trib's website. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEGxtfBxCaU
Update 1:48 pm: Attorneys are asking a judge to reconsider the decision that absolved Keller of any wrongdoing, the AP reports.
Lawyers say the review court was wrong when it cleared Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller. They argued, in a motion filed Tuesday, that the appropriate decision would have been to send the case back to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.
