Giving Cover To Keller, Senior CCA Justice Says She Won’t Resign (And Capitol Annex Sets The Record Straight)

Judge Larry Meyers, the most senior justice on the state’s highest criminal appeals court has formally denied that he and other justices on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals have “urged” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller to resign to halt a pending trial on a judicial conduct complaint.

Capitol Annex was the first to break the story that justices on the high court wanted Keller to step down last week. The Houston Chronicle‘s Rick Casey mentioned the story in his column this weekend.

Interestingly, Judge Meyers (and Sharon Keller’s legal team, if that is in fact who made sure he went to her hometown on rumor control) and the Dallas Morning News must have a little difficulty with reading comprehension.

Although they didn’t mention the Capitol Annex story from last week, it is clear that Meyers’ ed board appearance and comments were directed at the coverage.

So, let’s set the record straight. The Dallas Morning News noted:

The senior judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Monday that he and his colleagues have urged Presiding Judge Sharon Keller to resign over allegations that she improperly blocked a last-minute plea to halt an execution.

Meyers went on the record denying that his colleagues have actually urged Keller to resign. In essence, he is denying a claim that neither Capitol Annex no anyone else actually made. We never claimed in our original post that any of the CCA justices had actually spoken to Keller (or, for that matter, sent her a post-it-note) actually “urging” her to do anything. Here is what we reported, and what we stand by:

A source closely connected with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals told Capitol Annex that several of the justices on the state’s highest criminal court want Presiding Justice Sharon Keller to resign in order to halt proceedings brought by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

There is a big difference between justices having conversations among themselves, court staff, legal professionals and with other elected officials and expressing this sentiment and expressing it to Keller herself. We clearly made the distinction, and never intimated that the judges had personally urged Keller to do anything. That a number of the justices want her to resign, however, remains undisputed.

Note that Meyers himself wouldn’t directly address the question of whether he wants Keller to step down:

“It would not be for me to tell her what to do,” Judge Larry Meyers said during an hourlong interview with The Dallas Morning News editorial board.

Meyers, a former Fort Worth appellate judge who has spent 17 years on the Austin court, said he had spoken with Keller, and she seems resolved to fight the charges brought two weeks ago by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

“I think she’s determined to air it out,” he said.

Chip Babcock, a Dallas attorney for Keller, dismissed any notion she would resign.

Now, if Justice Meyers would like to go on the record and say that no justice of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wants Keller to resign, that would be both newsworthy, shocking, and a departure from what has previously occurred.