Texas House panel will hear testimony Monday on bill to impeach Justice Sharon Keller

12:06 PM CDT on Thursday, April 23, 2009
By BRUCE TOMASO / The Dallas Morning News
btomaso@dallasnews.com

A Texas House committee will hear testimony Monday on a bill that could lead to the impeachment of Sharon Keller, chief justice of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Keller, a Republican and a former Dallas County prosecutor, has come under fire from death-penalty opponents and others. She's accused of refusing to allow the court to remain open after 5 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2007, to accept a last-minute appeal from a death-row inmate. He was executed hours later.

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, has introduced legislation that would create a special House committee to consider Keller's imeachment. His bill accuses her of "gross neglect of duty and conducting her official duties with willful disregard for human life."

The justice has denied that she did anything improper.

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Monday's hearing will be before the House Committee on the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence.

If Burnam's bill passed, and if the House found cause for impeachment, the judge would be tried before the Texas Senate.

Keller also faces ethics charges by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct stemming from her role in the court's refusal to accept the inmate's late plea.

And the Texas Ethics Commission is looking into a complaint that she did not fully disclose her extensive real estate holdings in filings with the commission.

Keller is the daughter of Jack Keller, who operates Keller's Drive-In, the popular hamburger restaurant on East Northwest Highway in Dallas.