It's a Real Choice for the GOP Nomination for Presiding Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals

 

Justice David L. Bridges of Dallas's Fifth State Court of Appeals is running to be Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court.  He got his high school diploma from Rains High School, served two years in the Army, worked his way through college assembling air conditioners for General Electric, and after that, worked as a landman. He graduated law school at Texas Tech, was allowed to practice his third year of law school.helping indigent families and migrant workers with family law issues. He worked for the Palo Duro Legal Aid through the Presbyterian Church in West Texas, then the Smith County District Attorney's Office first trying misdemeanors, then felonies. After two years, he went to work in Upshur County for the District Attorney and was First Assistant. He became a senior trial attorney for the State Bar of Texas. In 1990, he was named Regional Counsel for the State Bar and was responsible for Dallas County and forty-four other counties. I went back to Austin and was named First Assistant and Chief of Litigation and handled all the attorney discipline cases in Texas. After a short time of being in private practice, he has spent the last 22 years as a Justice on Dallas's Fifth Court of Appeals.  He is running against incumbent Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and urges voters to Google Sharon Keller ethics.

Sharon Keller's Done a Lot of Stuff and She's Doing a Lot of Stuff

Three seats on Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals will be contested in the fall. With the shriveling up of newspapers and fair-minded, even-handed news coverage on the internet, we're going to post information about all of the candidates.

Presiding Judge Sharon Keller runs for re-election. She grew up in Dallas, went to undergraduate school in Houston at Rice University taking a degree in philosophy. After that, she went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas and took a Juris Doctorate at Southern Methodist University. She worked for another attorney at first. Later she was a solo and spent some time working in her parents' family business. She got appointed for many criminal appeals and ended up an appellate prosecutor in the Dallas County District Attorney's office. She ran as a Republican before being a Republican was cool and won a seat on the bench in 1994. In 2000, she was elected Presiding Judge, and was reelected in 2006 and 2012. She has gotten through this most recent term without the challenges of her past troubles.
She is the candidate of experience in this race. The Presiding Judge is not only the senior jurist of the nine jurists, but she is the administrator of the court with its sizable budget and dozens of staffers. By virtue of her office she is the vice-chair of the Texas Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the Texas judiciary. She is the chair of the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. They grant money and develop systems to help with indigent criminal defense. They count the appointment hours private defenders of indigents serve, finance continuing legal education for indigent defenders, developed a way for indigent west Texas capital defendants to have a measure of choice in who their lawyers were, among other good works. She's also on the board of the Council of State Governments Justice Center which develop and popularize innovative law enforcement, judicial, and corrections policies. Although she chooses half of the members of Texas Department of Criminal Justice Judicial Advisory Council, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas chooses the other half. Chief Justice Hecht chose Presiding Judge Keller as a member.
Presiding Judge Keller said that she enjoyed the "extra-curricular" (ceremonial) parts of her  job very much and didn't think, when she started the job, that she would enjoy that part so much.
She has only one opponent for the Republican nomination, David Bridges of the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas. There is only one Democrat seeking the nomination of that party, Maria T. ("Terri") Jackson, judge of Houston's 339th Judicial District Court; her husband recently had cancer surgery. About Ms. Jackson, more in March.

Required Changes in Texas Criminal Law Filings Beginning July 1, 2017

Electronic filing is already required in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Texas Courts of Appeal for parties represented by lawyers under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.2(c)(1) and (2). Now it's going to be required in district courts, county-courts-at-law, and constitutional county courts for those represented by lawyers.

(What's the difference between a county-court-at-law and a constitutional county court you ask? The Texas Constitution sets up a default, skeleton set of county offices-- the minimum needed, and then the legislature can establish extra offices for those counties big enough to need them. In large counties, even ones as small as my Montgomery County, the title of the chief executive of the county is County Judge. The county legislature, which also has a number of executive powers, is called the County Commissioners' Court, which the County Judge presides over, but the County Judge doesn't hold a judicial court or preside over any true judicial proceedings. The judicial powers of the County Judge in such a county are reposed in one or more county-courts-at-law established by the legislature. Montgomery County has five; Harris County-- the largest-- has 20-- 16 criminal and four civil-- and additionally, four probate courts-- which have a mix of county-court-at-law powers and state district court powers.  In a tiny rural county, like Matagorda County where I used to live, the County Judge actually has judicial powers as well, holding court about some civil matters and also holding court on misdemeanors and also hearing cases appealed from justice courts, municipal courts and small claims courts, the latter three courts being the lowest level courts in the state. The buildings and the judges and the court staff for justice courts are the same as for small claims courts.)

Electronic filing will be mandatory in criminal cases in the district courts, statutory county courts, and constitutional county courts according to this schedule based  upon  the  counties'  2010  Federal  Census population:

a.      Courts in counties with a population of 500,000 or more- July  1,  2017

b.      Courts in counties with a population of 200,000 to 499,999 - January 1, 2018

c.      Courts in counties with a population of 100,000 to 199,999 - July 1, 2018

d.     Courts in counties with a population of 50,000 to 99,999- January 1, 2019

e.      Courts in counties with a population of 20,000 to 49,999 - July 1, 2019

f.       Courts in counties with a population of less than 20,000 - January 1, 2020

Municipal courts and justice courts will not have to change, except that if they accept any electronic filing they have to follow the rules that the higher courts use (Small claims court has no criminal jurisdiction.).

Pro se litigants will still be able to use paper. Some of them will be on the wrong side of the digital divide. Other are locked up and authorities don't want to give those people access to internet-enabled computers.