“The court has even refused relief to a convicted rapist, Roy Criner, even though DNA testing conducted after trial showed the semen found in the victim wasn’t his. The case is so problematic that one judge who voted with the majority told the Tribune he now believes his vote in the case was wrong and Criner should get a new trial.”
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As the Tribune noted, the opinion that denied Criner a new trial was written by Judge Sharon Keller, who the paper said “has in many ways come to epitomize the current appeals court and its handling of cases.” Since shortly after “State of Execution” was published, Keller has been the presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and now she’s back in the news. An article on Judge Keller in Sunday’s New York Times recalled the Criner decision, which it said highlighted what her critics see “as her strong and habitual bias for the prosecution. Many Texas defense lawyers describe her as a law-and-order zealot who rejects most appeals out of hand.”
Keller denies the charges and has hired a lawyer. There will be a public hearing, and in the end the judge could be thrown off the bench.
Before he began his summation, Babcock had put a bound copy of the “Trial & Error” series on each juror’s chair. Now he called the series to their attention. He said, “I encourage you at some point during your deliberations or at some other time–these are yours to keep–that you spend the time to read this series. It is important award-winning journalism and is shedding light on our societal problems so that people like Steve Buckley [the only one of the three defendants in the Nicarico case who wasn’t originally sentenced to death] don’t have to spend three years in prison when they are innocent.”
