Criminal Appeals candidate wants to see justice done – with video

By George Schwarz
The Amarillo Independent

Keith Hampton wants to be a judge.
And not just any judge.
He wants to sit on the Court of Criminal Appeals, sometimes the last stop before the gurney in Huntsville.
But, as with the U.S. Supreme Court hearings in Washington, Hampton said judicial ethics limit what he can talk about before the election.
“I think the key thing that you’re looking at is the person’s track record for integrity,” Hampton said.
“And the reason is that you’re going to have to take an oath and that oath is to the law and to the people of Texas. So whatever your personal leanings are, you’re taking that oath and you’re walking in there to be the judge.”
The bottom line is whether someone can adhere to the oath, said the Democratic Party’s nominee seeking to unseat incumbent Judge Michael E. Keasler.
It’s more important for a judge to see justice done than to rule based on his own personal beliefs or agenda, he said.
But the irony of the judicial selection process in Texas is that the candidates can’t answer the very questions that would get at how well they would do as a judge, he said.
That’s why he declined to address the question of whether the Texas capital punishment system is broken. However, Hampton indicated he believed that there is a likely possibility that at least three innocents have been executed in the state.
“I don’t think anyone would claim that the Texas death-penalty system is perfect and a system built by humans and run by them is bound to make mistakes,” he said.
He cited the cases of Ruben Cantu, Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham.
“There is a lot of compelling evidence there,” he said of the three cases, adding it’s difficult to prove to everyone’s satisfaction that an innocent person has been executed.
Hampton graduated from St. Mary’s Law School in 1989 and clerked for Judge Sam Houston Clinton before going into private practice specializing in civil rights and criminal defense work.
Hampton said he has worked every aspect of criminal defense and criminal appeals cases and is uniquely qualified to understand what goes on, both off the record and on the record, with respect to criminal appeals to the court.