What's Going on at the CCA?
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I don't practice criminal appellate law, and I don't ordinarily follow the the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, but even I notice when the CCA makes front-page news for the wrong reasons.
In case you haven't heard, the media is lambasting the CCA (more specifically, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller) for refusing to keep the clerk's office open past 5:00 to accept a last-minute filing in a death penalty appeal. Earlier the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a Kentucky case challenging lethal injections as cruel and unusual punishment, and Texas death row inmate Michael Richard was scheduled to die by lethal injection that evening. The media coverage provides the details, but because of Presiding Judge Keller's decision, the Richard execution went forward without the possibility of court intervention on potentially meritorious grounds.
The Texas Supreme Court doesn't make life-or-death decisions, and it is receiving its share of negative press these days. But one of the things that court does right is allow electronic or after-hours submissions (with an advance call to the clerk's office, as apparently occurred in the Richard case) to get emergencies in front of the Court when its decisions can still make a difference. One would think that if a civil court can accommodate litigants when money is the only thing at stake, a criminal court could do the same in matters of life and death.
[...] What's Going on at the CCA? [...]
I found this interesting case in which the CCA stayed an execution on its own initiative after a Habeas Corpus applicant 'suggested' on the day before his execution that the court review its decision. See: TRAP 79.2(d). In this case, the CCA stayed an execution after a denied state HC petition.
I think that it is interesting to note that in the months before the Richard case, the CCA did, in fact show compassion in that they diligently considered their prior judgment "on their own initiative" and did so prior to the media attention that followed the Richard execution.
In February of this year, the writ was granted and now, 21 years after his conviction, Jose Angel Moreno will get a new penalty hearing.
Ex parte Moreno, No. AP-75, 245 S.W.3d 419 (Tex.Crim.App. 02/06/2008)