Remember when Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller refused to keep the CCA clerk’s office open after 5 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2007 to accept an application for a stay of execution for Michael Richards, who was executed that day? In formal proceedings against Keller, she alleges that she was never told that Richards’ lawyers were having computer problems that delayed their application. And, that the judge would have accepted an application written on a scrap of paper, prior to the clerk’s office closing.
I guess time matters for Keller, and takes precedence over life. But I don’t think you can generalize that to the great state of Texas. Hopefully, the formal proceedings against Keller will sort the matter out.
But this story has a lesson for IT. Legal systems can be just as critical as financial and medical systems: keep’em running.
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