Sharon Keller

Sharon Faye Keller (born August 1, 1953) is the Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

She is a Republican.

Born in Texas, Keller graduated from Rice University in Houston in 1975 with a major in philosophy and obtained her Juris Doctor in 1978 from Southern Methodist University School of Law.

According to Texas Monthly, when Keller was asked in a preelection interview if she was bound to follow the law, even if it meant an unjust result.

"Absolutely ... Who is going to determine what justice is? Me? I think justice is achieved by following the law", she replied.

"She's extremely religious ... [S]he believes strongly that God is on her side", said one colleague.

"Her commitment to her religion was enormous", stated another friend.

She is chairman of the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense.

She serves on the executive board of the Capitol Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

In the evening of September 27, 1986, Roy Criner, a logger from New Caney, Texas, allegedly told his boss (Pitts) and two friends (Hooker and Ringo), that he had picked up a hitchhiker, driven her to Pitts' logging facility, threatened to kill her with a screwdriver, raped her, and thrown her out of the truck.

Their testimony was not uniform.

Ringo later testified that Criner did not specify when the events with the girl took place, while Hooker thought Criner said Friday night; Ringo testified that Criner did not say explicitly that he raped and killed her, while Hooker attributed the rape claim to him, and that Criner had picked the hitchhiker up at a store in New Caney.

In 1996, Keller wrote her first major opinion (for a 5–4 majority), which denied a new trial to Cesar Fierro, who had confessed to murdering an El Paso cab driver, Nicholas Castanon.

It had been revealed after trial that the Ciudad Juárez police had threatened to torture the defendant's mother and stepfather unless he confessed.

A detective, Al Medrano, was aware that the confession had been coerced but denied it at trial.

However, he later filed an affidavit admitting his perjury.

The prosecutor and the trial judge agreed that Fierro deserved a new trial; however Keller and the CCA disagreed.

A laborer born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and reared on both sides of the border, Fierro was arrested when Gerardo Olague, a 16-year-old, implicated him five months after Castanon's slaying.

Olague testified that Castanon had agreed to give him (Olague) and Fierro a ride to Ciudad Juárez, and Fierro shot and killed Castanon on the way there.

Fierro was in an El Paso jail when police questioned him about the Castanon murder.

He later alleged that during the questioning local police coerced his confession by threatening to harm his parents, who they said were being held hostage in Mexico by Juárez detectives.

Fierro said in a recent interview from Death Row in Livingston: "He told me if I signed, then they'd let them go, and if not, they were going to torture them."

At Fierro's trial, Ciudad Juárez and El Paso police denied any wrongdoing.

In the opinion, Keller accepted the trial court's conclusion of law that "there was a strong likelihood that the defendant's confession had been coerced by the actions of the Juárez police and by the knowledge and acquiescence [sic] of those actions by Detective Medrano."

Although she acknowledged that Fierro's "due process rights were violated", she concluded that "the error was harmless" and denied the motion for a new trial.

She indicated that the "knowing use of perjured testimony" is trial error and that applicant had to prove harm by a preponderance of evidence.

In addition to the confession, the State also had the testimony of Olague.

The opinion held that it was more probable that the outcome of the trial would have been the same without the confession.

Judges Clinton, Maloney, Charlie Baird, and Morris Overstreet all dissented.

Overstreet called a confession the "most powerful piece of evidence" a prosecutor can offer.

He said it was "totally inconceivable" that Fierro's confession had not convinced the jurors of his guilt.

Maloney and Overstreet felt that the burden should have been on the State to show that the "perjured testimony" was harmless.

Regardless, they felt Fierro had proved harm by a preponderance of evidence.

They pointed out that the prosecutor had testified that had he known the confession was coerced, he would have joined a motion to suppress it which he felt would have been granted.

Without the confession, he would then not have proceeded with the prosecution unless he could have corroborated Olague's testimony because he felt Olague was "not the most credible witness".

The dissenters believed this demonstrated that the prosecutor considered the confession to be critical.

Further, in the Supreme Court case the majority cited to support its claim that the perjured testimony was subject to a harmless error analysis, "the Supreme Court recognized that some trial errors may be so egregious as to entitle an applicant to relief even if the error could not be shown to affect the jury's verdict".

In 2000, Keller was challenged in the Republican primary election for the presiding judge slot of the Court of Criminal Appeals by sitting Judge Tom Price of Dallas.

Keller prevailed, 122,958 (54.8 percent) to Price's 101,514 votes (45.2 percent).

Price continued serving on the court until his retirement in 2015.