Texas Justice II

Scott Horton, international law and human rights lawyer who blogs for Harper's has a recent post in which he notes the heavily Republican-weighted federal judiciary. Of the 678 judges, he writes, about two-thirds of them are Republican, and two-thirds of those Republican judges were appointed by George W. Bush. These appointed judges tend to be the most politically ideological. Horton highlights one particular judge from Texas, Sharon Keller, "the senior judge of the state’s court of criminal appeals." Keller was elected when George Bush was elected, and she has proven to be extremely conservative, a "hanging judge." Most troubling is her handling of the case of a mentally retarded man incarcerated for rape and murder. Even though recent DNA tests indicated that the semen in the victim was not Roy Criner's, Keller refused to allow the man a new trial. However, public outrage over her judgment was so wide-spread that President Bush pardoned Criner. Now Keller is being investigated for other abusive conduct.

As Horton points out, it's unusual for federal judges to be held accountable in such ethical breaches. Recently, the Supreme Court deliberated on a case that focused on campaign contributions and the impartiality of judges: Should judges step aside from a case when it involves a supporter who contributed large amounts of money to that judge's campaign? The case involves a judge in West Virginia who received a contribution of $3 million from a supporter who was later a party in a lawsuit over which the judge presided.

According to a study by political scientists Chris Bonneau of the University of Pittsburgh and Damon Cann of Utah State University, "campaign contributions appear to affect the outcome of cases in states where judges are elected in partisan contests." Which states did the professors study? Michigan and......Texas. Because the study focuses only on these two states, the study is small, but Cann and Bonneau are planning a larger study that will draw information from ten states.

Just something to think about........

Texas Justice

In 1986, Timothy Cole, a student at Texas Tech in Lubbock, was convicted of raping another student at the university, even though:

• his friends provided an alibi for him,
• he was an asthmatic and a non-smoker, but the rapist was a chain smoker
• and the only evidence was the victim's identification of him from a "poorly constructed photo lineup."

The rapist left behind a fingerprint on a cigarette lighter at the scene of the crime, but Lubbock police destroyed that evidence. Timothy Cole refused the prosecution's offer of probation if he confessed; he told his mother that he would rather be imprisoned for something he hadn't done than live free, labelled unjustly as a sexual offender.

In 1995, the real rapist, a man imprisoned for other similar crimes, wrote letters to Lubbock officials and judge Jim Bob Darnell, an assistant district attorney who prosecuted Cole in 1986. Now that the statute of limitations was up, Jerry Wayne Johnson confessed to the crime--but neither Lubbock officials nor Darnell responded to the letters. Over ten years later Jerry Wayne Johnson's continued letter writing confessions caught the attention of Jeff Blackburn and the Innocence Project of Texas. The Innocence Project brought the case to the attention of the Lubbock courts, which refused the Project's request for an inquiry, even though DNA testing proved Cole's innocence. So The Innocence Project took the case to Austin. Finally, Timothy Brian Cole received justice--but Timothy Brian Cole had died in prison in 1999, of an asthmatic attack.

On February 5, 2009:

Travis Co. District Judge Charlie Baird formally exonerated Cole – setting free, at least, his name and reputation. According to the Innocence Project of Texas, it is the first posthumous exoneration in Texas history. "Cole's Posthumous Exoneration is First for Texas," Jordan Smith, The Austin Chronicle, February 13, 2009.

According to NPR,

So far this decade, 34 men in Texas, most of them black, have been exonerated by modern DNA testing. They spent 10, 15, 20, even 27 years wrongly imprisoned for rape before being released. "Family of Man Cleared by DNA Still Seeks Justice," Wade Goodwyn, Morning Edition, February 5, 2009.

I look at the picture of that handsome young man and wonder how many other young men have suffered such Texas justice. See some of them here, at the Innocence Project of Texas website.