Sharon Keller is Texas' Judge Dread

Many attorneys talk about landmark cases they won like old men reliving the night they led their high school team to the conference title. They become excited and giddy, choreographing each scene of their legal triumph as though they've reveled in it every day since. But when Charlton reflects on Criner's case, he turns disconsolate and detached. He may have helped free an innocent man from a 99-year prison sentence, but there is no trace of glee in his voice, only a sense of frustration that probably hasn't ebbed in seven years.

To some of Keller's detractors, the judge honed a one-sided and arbitrary disposition during her six-year stint as a prosecutor at the Dallas County District Attorney's Office. There was a time when the office that former chief prosecutor Henry Wade built was considered a training ground for bright young lawyers, some of whom would go on to become highly paid defense attorneys and well-respected judges. But over the last year, the legacy of Wade and his office has been badly tarnished as Dallas County has been forced to release more than a dozen innocent prisoners, nearly all of whom were wrongfully convicted during his tenure

Critics of Wade and his like-minded successors—among them John Vance, who hired Keller—say that for more than a generation, the District Attorney's Office has been overly aggressive, if not flat-out reckless in performing its duties. The ethical obligation that prosecutors have to seek justice was a mere academic notion—what mattered most was dispatching shackled defendants to jail, even if it took shaky eyewitness accounts to gain a conviction. Keller's growing legion of naysayers see her as a judge who never seems to consider that prosecutors sometimes badly err—as they did with Roy Criner—and they blame that on Keller's old employer.

"Certainly the culture of the Dallas County District Attorney's Office shaped her, formed her and gave her to us," says Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "The Richard case really reflects her attitude that she's not really a jurist; she's more interested in moving people on to convictions and to the death penalty."

Hagood, who knew Keller when she was "the star of the appellate section," eagerly defends his longtime friend. "She's an outstanding attorney in every respect: very bright, conscientious, ethical and focused."

But Craig Watkins, the Dallas County district attorney who has worked to remedy the mistakes of his predecessors, says that even if Keller was a good lawyer, she learned some bad lessons along the way. The shadow of Wade hung over the District Attorney's Office for years, maintaining a warped legal culture, he says.

"The DAs after Henry Wade were prodigies of Henry Wade, and I don't want to disparage him, but let's be honest, there were some things that were done to defendants that were unfair," Watkins says. "This office is a training ground to prepare lawyers, and obviously you take on the mentality of this office. I think most lawyers, after they've left for private practice, understand the past failures of this office and are honest with it."

Even if Michael Richard's lawyers were able to stay his execution, he likely would have been put to death eventually. The Supreme Court may rule soon that the drug cocktails used in a lethal injection, in fact, do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Then executions in Texas and across the country would resume. Even if the court has problems with the standard lethal-injection protocol, states could refine it to overcome those concerns.

So it's not likely that Richard could have avoided his date with death for another two decades. Criner, though, was an innocent man, and Keller helped keep him in prison for two additional years after DNA tests cleared him of the crime. Then she offered a clumsy, embarrassing rationale of her decision on national television.

Yet the pure simplicity of how Keller turned off the clock before a Death Row inmate could file an 11th-hour appeal has made her a pariah among lawyers. Whether her conduct here was worse than before, or whether it hit the tipping point, Keller really did it this time. She'll probably keep her seat, but her reputation is beyond repair.

More than 300 lawyers have signed on to official complaints about her actions to both the State Bar of Texas and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. Many of them represent the very heart of a legal establishment not known for picking fights with high-ranking judges.

"I signed the petition because it was very unsettling to me as a lawyer that any criminal defendant's life, however unworthy it may be, could be dealt with in such a cavalier manner," says Broadus Spivey, a former state Bar president who specializes in legal malpractice. "To a person, everyone with whom I have discussed this situation agrees with me that it should have never happened. I have never seen such a unanimous response from the legal profession."

Dick DeGuerin, the celebrated defense attorney who has represented a spate of high-profile clients ranging from Tom DeLay to the late David Koresh, also signed the petition against Keller.

"She has done some outrageous things, but this was the last straw," he says. "It was so clearly a life-and-death situation."

But the problem is that this probably won't be the last straw. Even in a state that has locked up more than its share of guiltless defendants, judges rarely receive any kind of severe sanction. Most lawyers expect Keller to receive a mere slap on the wrist, if that.

Brian Wice, for one, says that no matter what sitting judges do, they almost never have to worry about being kicked off the bench.

"When you look at the conduct that will get you sanctioned from the judicial commission, it's like getting kicked out of a Guns N' Roses concert," he says, "I think she will survive."