Notable Cases:

• Sims v. State (2019) Signed Hervey's unanimous opinion. Held that supression of evidence was not an available remedy under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) unless the violation also violated the United States Constitution, and that it was not a remedy under Article 18.21 unless the US or TX Constitutions were infringed upon (3). Held that the defendant did not have an expectation of privacy in the real-time location stored on his phone (3). Case involved a suspect who was found by pinging his cell phone, which he argued violated his Fourth Amendment rights (4). Noted that the SCA and Article 18.21 contain exclusivity provisions that are only waived in areas of conflict with federal/state constitutions (10). Rejected appellant's argument that the provisions were ambiguous, holding instead that the law did not need to be so specific as to exclude individual state and federal remedies (10-11). Held that the SCA and Article 18.21 were compatible with Article 38.23(a) by applying the “general versus the specific” canon (12). Held that the specific SCA and Article 18.21 prevailed over the general Article 38.23(a) (12-13). Held that SCOTUS' Carpenter precedent applied to both CSLI and real-time location information, and in such situations the precedents of Smith and Knotts were discredited (18-19). Held that whether a government had undertaken a search/seizure turned on whether the amount of information that was seized violated a reasonable expectation of privacy (19). Held that Carpenter indicated there was no bright line for when such an expectation was violated, and therefore it was determined case-by-case (19). Held that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in law enforcement pinging his phone fewer than 5 times (20). 
• State v. Stephens (2021) Signed McClure's majority opinion. Held that Texas Election Code section 273.021 delegated a power properly held by the judicial branch to the Attorney General (AG) and was therefore unconstitutional (1-2). Cited precedent that the AG never had the authority to institute a criminal prosecution (5). Cited that the court had traditionally found a difference in powers between district attorneys and the Attorney General (8). Held that the court of appeals misconstrued the constitutional language empowering the AG to "perform such other duties as may be required by law," since ejusdem generis is limited to things of the same kind, and prosecution was not one of the powers granted to the AG (11-12). Argued that reading "other duties" sections so broadly greatly harms the separation of powers (13). Noted that prosecuting violations of election law was also not "required" as the constitution said, as the plain text said that the AG "may" prosecute violations (16). Held that the TX Constitution required county and district attorney consent (17).
  
• Bell v. State (2021) Signed per curiam majority opinion. Held that a jury charge which failed to accurately state the sequencing requirement of the habitual offender statute should be analyzed with a harm analysis, rather than treating the charge as an illegal sentence (1-2). Cited precedent and held that if a defendant's sentence is not supported by the prior convictions, then his sentence is "illegal" (6). Noted that in Almanza v. State the court held that errors in jury instructions do not warrant automatic reversal (7). Held that, while the facts of the Niles precedent were distinguishable, the holding still applied (8-9). Therefore, harm analysis was proper (9). Held that there was no dispute that the underlying convictions supported enhancement (10).
  
• Ex Parte Jordan Bartlett Jones (2021) Signed Yeary's concurrence. Argued that the court should have published its opinion in this case (1). Agreed with the majority on most points, but argued that the court did not need to cite SCOTUS to support its affirmation of attaching a culpable mental state to the lack-of-effective consent element of the statute (1-2). Also argued that the statute did not need to satisfy strict scrutiny before being upheld, and that it was improper to conduct an overbreadth analysis (2). Argued that intermediate scrutiny should be employed rather than strict scrutiny because the law did not target speech per se but the secondary effect that speech has on privacy without consent (11). 
• Crider v. State (2020) Signed Yeary's majority opinion. Held that chemical testing evidence produced from a blood sample taken with the authority of a search warrant, yet without explicit authorization for chemical testing, did not violate the appellant's Fourth Amendment rights (1-2). Cited SCOTUS that "the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness" (4), and held that a judge that approved a blood draw on suspicion of DUI must necessarily make a finding of probably cause to justify testing (4). Held that Martinez was distinguishable from this case because testing was essentially a separate action from the draw of blood, while in this case the blood was drawn in order to be tested (5-6).
  
• State v. Doyal (2019) Wrote majority opinion. Held that § 551.143(a) of the Texas Open Meetings Act was unconstitutionally vague on its face (1). TOMA definition of "meeting" (4). The main provision required there to be a quorum to be subject to TOMA, but the appellee was prosecuted under § 551.143(a), which did not (5). Held that the State's citation of Asgeirsson v. Abbott was an implicit admission that TOMA regulated protected speech because Asgeirsson upheld the law as a "content-neutral time, place, or manner restriction" (6). Held that "meeting" was communicative both under the statutory definition and the state's interpretation of the word (7). Cited SCOTUS' Johnson v. US case that a law being challenged for facial vagueness is not inherently constitutional if the law covers some forms of conduct (9). Cited that vagueness is defined as “indeterminacy of precisely what the prohibited conduct is" (12). Held that the law was vague because it contained no language to limit its scope (13). Held that the largest issue with the law was its provision against "“knowingly conspir[ing] to circumvent this chapter" because it was impossible to interpret the statute literally written in that way and it would be impossible to know what it actually meant to circumvent the law (15-16). Held that it is one thing to use extratextual factors to determine which of multiple possible meanings is correct, but completely another to create a meaning out of wholecloth based on such factors (17). 
  

Judge Sharon Keller (R) is running for Presiding Judge of the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals.  

Employment: 

• Keller is currently serving her fifth term on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. She was first elected in 1994.  
• Elected Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000 and re-elected three times. 

Education: 

• Received J.D. degree from Southern Methodist University School of Law. 

Associations/Membership: 

• Chairman, Texas Indigent Defense Commission 
• Member, Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission, 
• Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation 
• Member, Judicial Advisory Council to the Community Justice Assistance Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. 
• She has been Chair of the Texas Indigent Defense Commission since its inception in 2002. 

Awards: 

• She was recently awarded the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Judicial Section of the State Bar of Texas. 

 Judicial Philosophy:

•  “According to Texas Monthly, when Keller was asked in a pre-election interview if she was bound to follow the law, even if it meant an unjust result. Keller replied, "Absolutely ... Who is going to determine what justice is? Me? I think justice is achieved by following the law[.]” [Wikipedia]

Controversial Issue: 

• “The Judgement of Sharon Keller” Texas Monthly, August 2009: 
  • “The New York Times called for Keller’s removal, as did a group of 24 judicial ethics experts from all over the country. The Legislature joined in the fray when Lon Burnam, a liberal Democrat from Fort Worth, filed a resolution to consider impeaching Keller. Texas hasn’t impeached a judge since 1975, but at an April legislative committee hearing, six lawyers and one former appellate judge spoke in favor of it. “If those reports are accurate,” said defense attorney and legal ethics expert Charles Herring, “Sharon Keller was personally responsible for killing a man on a day when he should not have died.” 
• “Judge Sharon Keller fined $100,000 for failing to disclose assets” Dallas News, April 30, 2010: 
  • “The Texas Ethics Commission ordered Keller to pay $100,000 after concluding she had repeatedly violated state disclosure law by not listing stock holdings, bank accounts, rental income, real estate and honoraria on personal financial statements.” 

TXJudges.org candidate comparison.