The Associated Press
AUSTIN — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided Tuesday to allow emergency e-mail appeals in death penalty cases, rather than requiring attorneys to physically file the paperwork at the court.
The decision comes less than two weeks after hundreds of the state’s top defense attorneys filed a petition asking the court to allow the electronic pleadings. Under the rules adopted, attorneys still must bring the printed petition to the court by 9:30 a.m. the next morning.
The Texas court had been one of the few in the nation that did not accept filings electronically.
“It’s certainly a step forward,” said Jim Harrington, dirctor of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The attorneys made the request after presiding Judge Sharon Keller recently refused to allow the court to stay open past 5 p.m., even though attorneys for death row inmate Michael Richard had called and asked for an extra 20 minutes to get their appeal to the court offices.
While other judges on the nine-member court waited after hours in anticipation of the appeal, Richard’s attorneys were hit with computer problems as they prepared an appeal in response to a U.S. Supreme Court announcement that they would review the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case. Their appeal never got to the court and Richard was executed that evening.
Richard, 49, so far has been the only person executed since the court made the Sept. 25 announcement.
“It certainly begs the question, of course, why, if they can do this so fast — within two weeks after we asked them to do it — they didn’t do it earlier,” Harrington said. “It underscores the fact that Richard would still be alive if they had done it earlier.”
About 300 Texas attorneys signed the petition, including two former Texas Supreme Court justices and two former court of appeals justices.
Harrington also represented several attorneys who last month filed a judicial conduct complaint Keller, accusing her of violating Richard’s rights.
The complaint to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct says Keller improperly cut off appeals that led to the execution. Cases before the commission are confidential and will only become public if disciplinary action is taken. Investigations before the commission typically take several months.