Texas execution delayed by state Supreme Court | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday night halted the planned execution of a man who would have been the first person in the United States executed for murder related to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

Supporters of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, turned to the Texas Supreme Court, which does not normally get involved in criminal cases, after the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court , earlier in the day rejected appeals to stop his lethal injection.

Roberson’s supporters include a coalition of Republicans and Democrats who say Roberson is innocent and was convicted based on flawed scientific evidence.

Hours after the original execution time of 6 p.m. local time in Texas, Roberson remained in a prison cell just meters from the death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville.

Gov. Greg Abbott had the authority to delay Roberson’s punishment for 30 days. Abbott has stopped only one impending execution in nearly a decade as governor and has not commented publicly on the case.

The Texas appeals court ruling was one of many legal decisions in the hours before Roberson’s scheduled lethal injection.

The state’s legal battle to carry out the execution faced a midnight CDT deadline to authorize Roberson’s execution. However, it was likely that the case would have to be solved long beforehand, as officers had to carry out procedures such as inserting intravenous needles and allowing time for an injection to take effect and for a doctor to pronounce him dead.

Early Thursday evening, a judge in Austin paused the execution after Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify before them next week in a final attempt to stop the execution.

Roberson, 57, was convicted of murdering his daughter Nikki Curtis in the East Texas city of Palestine. Roberson has long maintained his innocence, supported by some notable Republican lawmakers, Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason and the case’s lead investigator. Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.

Execution in Alabama

Also Thursday night, Alabama executed Derrick Dearman, who admitted killing five people with an ax and a gun in a 2016 drug-fueled rampage, and dropped his appeals to allow his lethal injection to go ahead.

Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty to a crime spree that began when he broke into the house where his estranged girlfriend was taking refuge.

Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama execution chamber, Dearman spoke to the victims’ family members and his own family. “Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you,” he said to the victims’ families, adding, “I’ve taken so much with me.” Finally, he said to his own family, “I love you all.”

Dearman dropped his appeals earlier this year. “I am guilty,” he wrote in a letter to a judge in April, adding that “it is not fair to the victims or their families to further delay the justice they so rightly deserve.”

Killed on Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile: Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Caleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.

Dearman had been on death row since 2018.

In the hours before his execution by lethal injection, Dearman was visited by his sons, his sister and his father. His last meal was a seafood platter that he brought from a local restaurant.

Information for this article was contributed by Juan A. Lozano, Michael Graczyk and Kim Chandler of The Associated Press.