Michael Wayne Richard

On August 18, 1986, in Hockley, Texas, while on parole for motor vehicle theft, Richard entered the home of Marguerite Lucille Dixon, stole two television sets, raped Dixon, fatally shot her, and then stole her van. In the wake of the Supreme Court of the United States expressing interest in the question of the constitutionality of lethal injections, on the same day that the execution was scheduled, Richard's lawyers sought a stay of execution. ==Trial and execution==

The stay request had to be filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. The execution was scheduled for 6 PM, but the court's clerks office, where motions are usually filed, was scheduled to close at 5 PM, and refused to remain open beyond then to allow a later filing. Richard's lawyers claimed that, because of a computer failure, they did not reach the Court of Criminal Appeals until about 5:20 p.m. Although there was a judge on call to receive emergency stay motions, and although Texas law would have allowed the stay application to be filed directly with a judge of the court, the lawyers did not attempt to contact any of them. ==Aftermath==

On February 19, 2009, the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct brought seven charges against Judge Sharon Keller, alleging ethical improprieties in Keller's handling of the case. A Special Master who had previously been a judge in the Court of Criminal Appeals was assigned to the case. The Special Master cast doubt on a number of the reported issues in the case. He concluded that there was no evidence that the Texas Defender Service suffered any "major" computer failure; although news reports had mentioned multiple crashes, the only claim that the TDS repeated during the hearings was that there had been some problems with an internal email service, and no documentation of those problems was produced. Moreland is a committed Quaker, and her exchange with Richard, was influenced by her personal faith and conviction that there is humanity in everyone, even the most condemned criminal. This correspondence was part of a wider letter-writing network established by LifeLines in the UK, an organisation that connected Britons with death row inmates, as part of a program that was opposed to capital punishment in the United States. ==See also==