Judge Says Sharon Keller Shouldn't Lose Job & Midday Roundup

By KERA News & Wire Services

Dallas, TX –

A report from the ethics trial of embattled Texas Judge Sharon Keller says she should not lose her job for closing her court before a death-row inmate could file a final appeal.

In a report released Wednesday, state district Judge David Berchelmann wrote that Keller's actions "was not exemplary" in the hours before Michael Richard was executed in September 2007.

But Berchelmann, who presided over Keller's ethics trial in August, recommended that Keller receive no reprimand "beyond the public humiliation she has surely suffered."

Keller faced five charged of judicial misconduct for refusing to keep her court open past 5 p.m. and allegedly denying Richard the right to file an appeal before his execution.

Texas population gain expected from Katrina

Where Hurricane Katrina evacuees are living as of April 1 is expected to bolster the Texas population count and possibly congressional clout. The Census Bureau put the 2009 population estimate for Texas at
nearly 24.8 million.

Census data is used to set congressional districts every 10 years and to divide federal funds.

Demographer William Frey with the Brookings Institution looked at growth rates from the first half of the decade.

The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Frey predicts Texas, now with 32 U.S. House members, will gain four seats, in part because of Katrina. Katrina stormed ashore in August 2005, sending evacuees from
Louisiana and other Gulf coast areas to Texas. A survey done by Texas found there were more than 250,000 evacuees statewide a year after Katrina.

Feds probing rash of church fires in East Texas

Federal authorities are investigating a rash of church fires in East Texas, where seven such blazes have been reported since Jan. 1. Police said the latest Tyler-area fire at Bethesda House of Prayer in Lindale was quickly contained Wednesday morning.

No injuries or deaths have been reported.

The Lindale fire came after two weekend church fires in Tyler, about 100 miles east of Dallas. Authorities have not said the fires are linked, or whether arson was the cause.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives moved in last week after three church fires were reported over 12 days in nearby Athens. The Athens blazes caused officials to re-examine a church fire in Canton, 40 miles west of Tyler.

UTA Public Information Officer, Former AP reporter Timothy Brown dead at 35

Timothy R. Brown, a reporter on the staff of the Associated Press for more than a decade in Jackson, Miss., has died in Dallas. He was 35. Brown left the AP in August to take a public affairs position at the University of Texas at Arlington.

His wife, Jacqueline, told the AP that Brown was taken ill Monday and was hospitalized in Dallas for tests. She said he died Tuesday. An autopsy was being performed. Funeral services are pending. Jacqueline Brown said they would be held in Jackson.