Lawmaker vows to continue to seek CCA presiding judge’s impeachment

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, says he will file a resolution in 2011 to start impeachment proceedings against Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller if the State Commission on Judicial Conduct does not remove Keller from the bench. “If she is not off the bench, I will file an impeachment resolution the first day” of the 2011 session, Burnam says in an interview minutes after he made a personal privilege speech to the Texas House of Representatives regarding Keller. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I had 75 signatures on the resolution,” Burnam says. In his speech to the House, Burnam alleged that Keller “demonstrated gross negligence and conducted her official duties with willful disregard for human life” on the evening of Sept. 25, 2007, when attorneys for Michael Richard were attempting to file a motion for stay of execution with the CCA. The state executed Richard later that night. Burnam filed H.R. 480 in February, calling for the appointment of a House committee to investigate the allegations against Keller, but the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee never voted on the resolution. Burnam says he did not have the votes to bring the resolution to the House floor in the current session but opted to make a personal privilege speech to inform his colleagues about the charges against Keller. “What I did today was provide basic education,” he says. On Feb. 19, the judicial conduct commission opened formal proceedings against Keller, alleging in its notice that Keller engaged in “willful and persistent conduct” by failing to follow the CCA’s execution-day procedures on the day Richard was executed. Keller, who did not immediately return a telephone call for comment on Burnam’s address to the House, denied all the commission’s allegations in her March 24 answer. The commission has set a hearing in In Re: Honorable Sharon Keller to begin Aug. 17 in Austin. The possible outcomes of the hearing are a recommendation by the commission to the Texas Supreme Court that Keller be removed from office, a public censure of Keller or a dismissal of the charges against her. 
-- Mary Alice Robbins