Texas lawmakers temporarily spare Robert Roberson from execution

Last night, Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson narrowly avoided becoming the first person in the country to be executed based on evidence of what was once called “shaken baby syndrome,” through an unprecedented bipartisan intervention Group of Texas Legislators.

Efforts by Roberson’s supporters to prevent his impending execution led to a dispute between branches of the Texas government on Thursday evening after a House committee issued Roberson a subpoena to testify next Monday – a highly unusual move that had practical implications for him to be placed under the auspices of the legislature’s subpoena authority.

A state district court issued a temporary stay of execution based on that subpoena, but it was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), the state’s highest criminal court, after the Texas Attorney General’s Office appealed. However, Texas lawmakers filed a lawsuit Emergency application with the Texas Supreme Court, which has jurisdiction over civil cases, asking it to issue an injunction against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to stop Roberson’s execution. The Supreme Court of Texas the interim injunction was grantedto save Roberson’s life for now.

This all happened hours before and after Roberson’s scheduled execution by lethal injection at 6 p.m.

“For over 20 years, Robert Roberson has spent 23.5 hours every day in a solitary cell no bigger than most Texans’ closets, longing to be heard,” said Democratic and Republican Reps. Joe Moody and Jeff Leah. each said in a joint statement on X after the Texas Supreme Court ruled in their favor. “And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not.”

“We look forward to welcoming Robert to the Texas Capitol and finally giving him – and the truth – a chance to be heard, along with 31 million Texans,” the lawmakers continued.

The baroque, eleventh-hour legal drama underscores the divisive nature of Roberson’s case and the intensity of the dispute over shaken baby syndrome convictions. As Reason reported In August of this year, Roberson was convicted of the 2003 murder of his two-year-old daughter, largely based on expert findings on shaken baby syndrome, now called Abusive Head Trauma (AHT).

However, the scientific consensus on AHT has changed significantly in the decades since Roberson’s conviction, and his lawyers argue that the forensic testimony at his original trial has now been discredited, both by advances in science and by previously undiscovered autopsy records that reveal it that Roberson’s daughter died of advanced pneumonia. In addition, Roberson was later diagnosed with autism, which, according to his lawyers, led doctors and police to interpret his behavior as callous.

Among those who believe in Roberson’s innocence – or at least believe there is reasonable doubt about his guilt – are former detective who arrested himwriter John Grisham and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who called on Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott to grant Roberson a 30-day reprieve in a statement about the court’s denial of the appeal. The New York Times Also reported that “more than half of the Republican-dominated Texas House of Representatives has advocated for the case to be reviewed.”

“The great team fighting for Robert Roberson – people across Texas, across the country and around the world – is delighted tonight that a group of courageous, bipartisan Texas lawmakers have chosen to take a hard look at the facts of Robert Roberson, who had not yet been considered by a court, realized that his life was worth fighting for,” Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s attorneys, said in a news release. “He lives to fight another day and hopes his experience can help improve the integrity of our criminal justice system.”

Without the intervention of the Texas legislature, it would have been the end of the road for Roberson. Texas Governor Greg Abbott rejected his request for clemency, as did the US Supreme Court rejected to stop his execution.

Roberson’s unusual reprieve came after the Texas Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena for him following the conclusion of a hearing Wednesday. That hearing examined the effectiveness of a law the Texas legislature passed specifically to address claims of innocence in cases like Roberson’s.

In 2013, Texas became the first state in the country to pass a law allowing inmates to challenge convictions based on outdated or debunked forensic methods. But defense attorneys and innocence groups say courts have failed to faithfully apply the so-called “junk science writ,” and not a single death row inmate in Texas has successfully obtained relief under the law.

A July report The first comprehensive review of junk science written by the Texas Defender Service concluded that “the law systematically fails to provide compensation to innocent people convicted based on false forensic evidence.”

“That’s inappropriate, that’s inappropriate,” Moody told The Houston Chronicle. “And if that is the case, it is absolutely within the jurisdiction of the legislature and our power to investigate it. And that is the crux of why we need Mr. Roberson as a witness.”

The court order has already saved Roberson from going to the execution chamber once. In 2016, the CCA granted Roberson a stay of execution to allow him a hearing to challenge his conviction on both grounds of actual innocence and junk science.

However, both the trial court and the CCA denied relief to Roberson, agreeing with prosecutors that the state’s cause of death theory was not the case because the experts at Roberson’s trial relied not solely on an AHT diagnosis, but on a Combination of shocks and blunt impacts had disproven.

This summer, the CCA summarily dismissed Roberson’s new petitions without considering the expert testimony based on new medical records, even though this was the case overturned a conviction in another AHT case in which one of the same experts testified as in the Roberson trial.

Prosecutors and child abuse specialists say there is broad scientific consensus about AHT, but innocence groups and forensic reform advocates have successfully convinced several state courts otherwise. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, at least 34 parents and caregivers in 18 states who were convicted based on AHT evidence have been exonerated.

“To be clear, Texas’ legacy as a leader in recognizing the critical role that advances in scientific and medical evidence in criminal cases play in ensuring the reliability, fairness and legitimacy of the criminal justice system is at risk if Mr. Roberson’s scheduled execution occurs . “are allowed to continue,” argued his lawyers.

Whatever happens next, Texas lawmakers have made sure that the public will see something unprecedented and important: a convicted man testifying before the state legislature about the laws and procedures he is using to ensure his own destruction.