Paxton’s endorsement leaves Republicans in control of the criminal justice system – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

The Texas Supreme Court will do that thereafter remain fully under Republican control All three conservative candidates, backed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, defeated their Democratic challengers by wide margins.

David Schenck, Gina Parker and Lee Finley each dethroned Republican incumbents in the primaries, supplanting nearly a century of experience on and in front of the bench. Paxton had vowed to fire judges who ruled his office could not unilaterally prosecute voter fraud allegations.

Only Schenck has previous legal experience, having served eight years on the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas. Parker is a Waco attorney who owns a dental equipment company, and Finley is a Collin County criminal defense attorney and U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

Recently, the court spotlight was on the execution of Robert Roberson, an East Texas man who received the death penalty after being convicted of murdering his two-year-old daughter in 2002. Roberson has long maintained his innocence. Although the Court of Criminal Appeals has repeatedly sided with the state and ruled that Roberson must die, a series of legal maneuvers by members of the Texas House convinced he was being denied due process delayed his execution .

The court recently ruled 5-4 to execute Roberson, but three of the five justices who voted against him were fired in the primaries. With new faces on the court, Roberson’s attorneys could call for a fresh look at his case, although the new justices’ loyalty to Paxton could temper expectations for a different outcome.

In recent weeks, with Roberson’s fate in limbo, Paxton has taken a more aggressive stance, releasing large amounts of evidence from the original trial intended to prove Roberson’s guilt. In a press release, he said House members had “grossly interfered with the justice system” and “created a constitutional crisis on behalf of a man who beat his two-year-old daughter to death.”

Paxton political retaliation

The path to getting these new faces on the bench starts long before this most recent election cycle. In 2018, after the Jefferson County district attorney declined to prosecute the sheriff for alleged campaign finance violations, Paxton’s office intervened and secured charges from a neighboring county.

This set off a legal debate over whether Paxton’s office had the authority to prosecute election cases without the local district attorney’s request. That question ultimately ended up before the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2021, which ruled 8-1 that this would constitute an executive overreach of the judiciary and violate the Constitution’s separation of powers clause of Texas.

“The attorney general may prosecute with the consent of the local prosecutor, but cannot prosecute unilaterally,” the court ruled.

Paxton warned that the ruling would open the door to rampant unpunished voter fraud in Democratic counties and vowed to work to dethrone the eight justices who ruled against him. Speaking to the right-wing True Texas Project in February, Paxton called the ruling “the most insidious evil plot” and “as bad as I’ve ever seen.”

The nine judges serve staggered six-year terms, with three seats each year. This year, Chief Judge Sharon Keller and Judges Barbarba Hervey and Michelle Slaughter were up for re-election. While Slaughter was in her first term, Hervey had been on the court since 2001 and Keller since 1994. She had been chief justice since 2000.

Paxton allies formed a political action committee, Texans for Responsible Judges, to recruit and support key challengers. Parker and Finley have made clear their allegiance to Paxton, with both questioning the court’s ruling on the voter fraud issue. Schenk, who insists he was not recruited by Paxton, focused his campaign on legal ethics and expediting justice.

After the primary selection by Paxton’s candidates, Hervey complained to The Texas Tribune that “Darth Vader isn’t supposed to win the war in those movies.”

Elsa Alcala, a former judge at the Criminal Court, said that even though these judges have the “taint” of Paxton’s politics, it is difficult to know how a judge will rule once they are seated and the cases are before them.

“It is certainly possible for them to take their judicial oath seriously and make decisions impartially, regardless of the political forces that put them there,” Alcala said.

Alcala, who became an outspoken death penalty critic during her time on the bench, said she is also optimistic that this election can change things for the Roberson case and others sentenced to death. She believes the court has sided with the state too quickly in capital murder cases and is unwilling to meaningfully reconsider cases under a 2013 “junk science” law that some House members of Representatives and Roberson’s attorneys have attempted to use to overturn Roberson’s death sentence.

Alcala points to Keller, the court’s longtime presiding judge, as a sticking point in rethinking the role of the death penalty in Texas.

“I just don’t think the court in general has changed with the times,” Alcala said. “She was the leader of the court, and so for me she was where a lot of the problems started (started) and ended.”

Alcala said she may be “overly optimistic” about what these new faces will mean for such a deep-seated issue in Texas.

“But change is all we can hope for,” she said.