With the Legislature’s special session less than a day old, state Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, refiled on June 30 two criminal-justice bills that proved highly divisive during the regular session. With HB 17, Keel is again offering his version of how the state should determine whether a capital-crime defendant is mentally retarded.
The U.S. Supreme Court last summer banned the execution of the mentally retarded, prompting several attempts this spring to change Texas law. Keel, who chaired the House criminal-justice committee, has proposed a system that is likely unconstitutional, where mental retardation would be determined during the punishment phase of a trial by the same jury that had already decided the defendant’s guilt or innocence. (An alternative, proposed this spring by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, would determine mental retardation during a separate pretrial proceeding. As of press time no bills had been filed that would revive this plan.)
Keel has also reintroduced his plan for ensuring the competency of court-appointed appeal attorneys to indigent defendants — a proposal that reformers say doesn’t do nearly enough. Keel would have the state Task Force on Indigent Defense adopt standards and maintain a list of qualified attorneys from which a convicting-court judge can choose — but would specifically exclude the criminal-defense bar from participating in the compiling of this list.
It is up to Gov. Rick Perry to decide whether either of Keel’s proposals will be addressed in the coming weeks. Neither was on the list of 28 topics Perry on Tuesday added to the call for the special session.
This article appears in Lost Austin II.