Still a crook any way you look
Before this year, even reasonably well-informed Texans didn’t know much about the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals. Then Attorney General Ken Paxton took a keen interest in ousting several of the court’s justices.
Suddenly, many voters knew the names Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey and Michelle Slaughter, three of the court’s nine Republican justices whose terms end this year. The three are staunch conservatives, frequently issuing rulings that hew closely to originalist interpretations of the state Constitution, as they did in ruling against Paxton three years ago. In that 8-1 decision, they ruled that the Constitution doesn’t allow Paxton to unilaterally pursue a voter fraud case without cooperating with local district or county attorneys.
Paxton (who also happens to have had key questions in the criminal proceedings against him wind their way to the CCA) went shopping for at least two candidates to challenge the incumbent justices, whom he claimed had “abandoned their conservative roots.” A third, David Schenck, insists Paxton didn’t recruit him, although a political action committee formed by Paxton allies endorsed him. All three challengers defeated the incumbents in the primary election, setting themselves up nicely for the general election in a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race in 30 years.
Judicial independence should be sacred, and the CCA is a high-stakes court. As the venue of last resort for all criminal matters, it routinely deals with matters of life and death, reviewing every case that results in a death penalty. Allowing the state’s top law enforcement officer to pack the court with cronies would undermine the court’s independence and trustworthiness. The public should always have faith that judges are applying the law fairly and ethically, immune from political influence no matter what party they belong to. We weighed this heavily in considering our endorsements for this crucial bench.
See here and here for some background. The Chron ultimately endorsed the Republican Schenck in Place 1 and Democrats Nancy Mulder and Chika Anyiam in Places 8 and 9, respectively. Schenck, whose Democratic opponent is Holly Taylor, was deemed sufficiently independent by the Chron while the other two Republicans were underqualified and completely in the bag for Paxton. The Supreme Court always gets the lion’s share of the attention around here, but these CCA races are really important too. Tell your friends.