CCA Presiding Judge Sharon Keller takes the stand

In testimony today, Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller called it a “close call” whether on Sept. 25, 2007, then-CCA general counsel Ed Marty violated the court’s execution day procedures when he called Keller — and not the judge assigned to handle Michael Richard’s case — to ask whether the clerk’s office closed at 5 p.m. “I think it was not a substantive matter, but I can see why people say it was,” Keller testified on the second day of her hearing on ethics charges. In February, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct brought charges against Keller, alleging in part that she failed to follow the execution day procedures when Marty asked her whether the CCA clerk’s office could remain open that day. The state executed Richard about three hours after the clerk’s office closed. Keller testified that she thought the same thing as Marty at the time — that it was an administrative matter. But Mike McKetta, the commission’s special counsel and a shareholder in Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody, told Keller that she knew that an execution was scheduled that day and that Marty’s call related to an execution. “If the execution were to take place, it could not be undone,” McKetta told Keller. A presentation of Marty’s testimony in an Aug. 9 deposition is scheduled Wednesday.
-- Mary Alice Robbins