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AUSTIN — The Texas Civil Rights Project asked a federal court Thursday to reopen a lawsuit against Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who refused to keep her court open in 2007 for lawyers trying to stop an execution.
Lawyers for the daughter of executed inmate Michael Richard contend that Keller misled the federal court that dismissed the original lawsuit last year. She is seeking unspecified damages.Jim Harrington, director of the civil-rights group, said Keller got the federal lawsuit dismissed in 2008 by claiming judicial immunity. But Harrington said that during the state proceedings this summer, Keller testified under oath that she was acting in an administrative capacity when she refused to keep the state’s highest criminal court open so Richard could file an appeal in the hours before his execution Sept. 25, 2007.He said her admission undercuts the judicial-immunity argument state lawyers made on her behalf in the federal lawsuit."You can’t have it both ways," Harrington said. "You can’t argue out of one side of your mouth in federal court when you’re facing liability and then turn around and argue a different position, a totally different position, in front of an administrative agency under oath out of the other side or your mouth."A call seeking comment from the Texas attorney general’s office, which defended Keller in the federal lawsuit, was not immediately returned.Keller is awaiting a separate ruling from a state judicial misconduct trial this year.
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