The reality is that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to stay Richard's execution and they declined.

IMO, these attacks have little to do with Richard's execution; rather, they are about the anti-death penalty crowd and the criminal defense attorneys settling old scores with Judge Keller.

quote:

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And as we all know, Ms. Dixon did not. Why are we, the victims and family/the police/the prosecutors/like minded citizens, seemingly the only ones to mourn Ms. Dixon, and what her death represents to the consitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

...

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Because we care, and that is why we do what we do.

So why does it take Dow so long to do this - I am sure he has filed numerous appeals or temporary injunctions alleging the lethal injection is unconstitutional. I have the one he filed in the Gregory Summers case dated October 2006. It shouldn't be that difficult to just add the more recent caselaw - it is all based on the same principle. By the way it was only 17 pages but with appendices probably over 100 pages. It does not seem like an attack on lethal injection would be case specific, so all that is needed is a little fine tuning.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TOUGH_TEXAS_JUDGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

JAS

Can you Bork someone after they're already a judge?

The AP article says: Keller's decision to close the courthouse doors before Richard's attorneys could file the 11th-hour appeal meant Richard was blocked from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Austin Chronicle says: Keller's decision to close the courthouse doors before Richard's attorneys could file the 11th-hour appeal meant Richard was blocked from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What a steaming pile of dog poop. We should all be outraged and protest with sandwich boards and poster signs around the Austin Chronicle. Maybe we can get Cindy Sheehan to hold a vigil against the truth slaying newspapers.

I know, we'll have a barbecue and a bake sale to raise enough money for a postage stamp to mail an angry letter expressing our disappointment with the media. We can model it on a UN resolution sanction. That will make a difference.

OR, we can take a deep breath and realize that they got it wrong again, laugh at the incompetence, and put our energy into something worthwhile.

And they totally forgot to mention that she slammed the door on him, too.

i know. clearly they got the facts wrong.

.deaD wronG

quote:

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[...]before Richard's attorneys could file the 11th-hour appeal [...]

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Well no. An 11th-hour appeal would be on time but just barely. To keep the analogy accurate he was requesting a 13th hour appeal.

I thought the doors were closed at 5:00, not 11:00. Man, the main-streat-media sure needs to do some fact checking.

So what facts did they get wrong?

Obviously, the term "11th hour appeal" is a literary device designed to illistrate a last-ditch attempt at doing something and is not meant to be taken literally.

But the facts of the story seem to be accurate:

1) attny tried to file appeal,

2) he called the court and told him it would be a little late on account of a computer problem,

3) judge specifically ordered the clerk to close at 5 pm and to not accept anything after that time,

4) judges were at the court and were expecting this late filed document (as evidenced by the statement made by Justice Johnson),

5) the document was not accepted by the court,

6) defendant did not get a stay or (in the alternative) a chance to appeal the denial of the stay to the US S.Ct,

7) defendant was executed.

The facts seems pretty straight forward to me and essentially accurate. No one has disputed what had happened and what the result was.

The court has accepted documents filed after 5 pm by others before in cases of lessor import, so why couldn't Judge Keller have done so again in this case?

Maybe she lost the door stop.

Not sure about #6 in that list:

quote:

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But the deliberations came too late for Michael Richard, 48. Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision to consider the issue, it refused to stop the state of Texas from giving him a lethal injection for raping and killing a mother of seven in 1986.

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This implies that the SCOTUS had the opportunity to stay the execution but did not choose to do so.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jntj0Eqb5PT2WJs_GS21iA5tj_vQ

Setting aside the red herring presented by the anti-death penalty crowd, by what true application of law should the defendant have received relief?

The defendant was fairly convicted and sentenced to death. There is no longer any legitimate claim as to innocence or nondeath worthiness.

The defendant failed to preserve the issue of the method of execution by raising it in his own case (at trial, on direct appeal, on state habeas or on federal habeas). It seems he did not have a personal concern for the constitutionality of lethal injection.

The issue litigated in Kentucky resulted in a trial judge finding the method was constitutional, as shown by substantial evidence heard by that court.

The Kentucky Supreme Court found that the trial court did a fine job of following the legal standards required for such a finding and accorded the trial court's decision great deference.

The SCOTUS granted review of that decision under circumstances that suggest the SCOTUS will ultimately affirm Kentucky's decision.

The defendant, then, seeing that a Kentucky defendant followed the rules and properly litigated the issue, sought, at the last possible minute, to piggyback on that litigation in an attempt to merely delay his own execution.

The defendant never gave the CCA an opportunity to rule on his request for a stay. The SCOTUS, when given such an opportunity, declined to stay the defendant's execution.

By any reasonable standard, the defendant and his many lawyers are now trying to use his own failure to litigate as a basis for attacking a single judge in order to demonize a punishment he very much earned.

RTC:

Here is a link to the United States Supreme Court's denial of Richard's request for stay of execution.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/orders/courtorders/092507pzr.pdf

[It is the last entry]

I don't see where in the attached clap-trap P.J. Keller ordered the Clerk not to accept anything. She simply said the door closes at the normal time. There are procedures for after hours filing. I think someone is making up the facts as they go along. Where is the grievance against the lawyer who doesn't know the rules?

Notice, too that the order on the stay says nothing about "and we can't grant one in this case because his lawyers did not timely file with the Court of Criminal Appeals."

In a subsequent case, Scalia dissented from a denial of a request to vacate a stay, making this statement:

I vote to grant the State's application to vacate the stay because in my view the decision of the Eighth Circuit was based on the mistaken premise that our grant of certiorari in Baze v. Rees, ___ S. Ct. ___ (2007), calls for the stay of every
execution in which an individual raises an Eighth Amendment challenge to the lethal injection protocol. The grant of certiorari in a single case does not alter the application of normal rules of procedure, including those related to timeliness.
In this case, Jones's challenge to the lethal injection protocol, which was brought nine years after his conviction and sentence became final, was dilatory.

[Hey, RTC, do you want to sign a petition against Scalia? Isn't he saying and doing the exact same thing as Presiding Judge Keller?]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RTC:
I doubt he could have got his paperwork in before that morning anyways simply because it was only that morning when the US S.Ct. had granted a stay in that KY case, so the issue was not available before then. So defense counsel had less than a day to get the paperwork together.

I know this thread has come to an end, but for Pete's sake, the 8th Amendment lethal injection claim did not suddenly come into existence on September 25! If inmates really don't like the method of execution, nothing, I repeat, NOTHING has ever stopped them from filing a subsequent writ any old time after their date is set, and possibly before then. Baze v. Rees will just tell us the standard for reviewing such claims, if and when they are made.

The lethal injection claim is now being used by TDS (and others) because it's a good way to stop an execution, not because it's a legitimate complaint about the way the inmate dies. Come on people.

Sorry for shouting.