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NEWS & LETTERS, June -July 2007Voices From the Inside OutKiller Keller and the Death Squadby C.C. Simmons In September 1986, the body of teenager Deanna Ogg was found in Texas. Ogg had been raped, bludgeoned and stabbed to death. About the same time, Roy Criner, 21, had bragged to his friends about picking up a hitchhiker and forcing her to have sex with him. While no other evidence connected Criner to the crime and despite his protestations of innocence, he was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ten years later, DNA tests showed the sperm found in Ogg was not Criner’s. Criner’s attorneys moved for a new trial and, in January, 1988, the trial court granted their motion. Four months later, the highest criminal court in Texas, the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), overruled that approval and denied a new trial. Sharon Keller, writing for the CCA, seemingly abandoned science, law and common sense when she declared, "The new evidence does not establish innocence." DNA was not enough. It seemed, said courtwatchers, that Keller wanted to keep Criner in prison, while totally unconcerned that Ogg’s true killer remained at large. In 2000, DNA tests were run on saliva from a cigarette found near Ogg’s body. That DNA matched the sperm found in Ogg, but neither DNA matched Criner. A month later, the county sheriff, district attorney and trial judge joined in asking for a pardon for Roy Criner. The Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously voted in favor of a pardon. In August, 2000, Governor Dubya briefly interrupted his run for the White House and set Criner free. By the peculiarities of Texas law, and without an acquittal, Criner remains a convicted murderer-rapist with a governor’s pardon in his pocket. To some, the Criner case was clear evidence that the CCA was little more than a cabal of right-wing, all white, Anglo, pro-prosecution ideologues with a convict-at-any-cost agenda. The national media described the CCA as a powerful group of nine Republicans whose goal seemed to be to slake the state’s bloodthirst for executions. Only 3% of the death penalty convictions that came before it were reversed, less than any other state’s high court. To understand the actions of the CCA, one must understand its now-Presiding Judge Sharon Keller. Under Keller’s increasing domination, the CCA ruled that almost any defect in the prosecution’s case, no matter how grave or outrageous, was "harmless." "For ten years now, she has not wavered in her ambition to see the state win every case," remarked one veteran court observer. "I don’t know how she sleeps at night," said a friend from the 1970s. "She believes she is doing the work of God," noted an ex-staffer. Among Texas legislators, she is known as "Sharon Killer," no doubt for her steadfast refusal to reverse death sentences. Among the other eight CCA judges, she is referred to as "Mother Superior" for her studious and diligent devotion to upholding the state’s position, however flawed, on any case brought before her court. In 1999, the Texas legislature passed a law which authorized the CCA to prepare a list of "approved attorneys" who would handle the death penalty cases for indigent defendants. The list included many sub-competent attorneys who had no idea how to prepare a petition for a writ of habeas corpus for a condemned prisoner. Some suggested the CCA purposely selected marginally competent attorneys for the approved list. The CCA has never removed a lawyer from the approved list for disciplinary or competency reasons. The unfairness of the system is glaringly apparent from the mismatched teams that debate their cases before the CCA. For the defense, a single court-appointed attorney, shamefully underpaid and without benefit of an investigator or a researcher, is pitted against the enormous resources of the state supported by a group of staff lawyers called the "Death Squad," who work on nothing but death penalty cases with the objective of upholding a conviction. Can there be any doubt why Texas executes more prisoners than any other state in the nation? |
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