The Texas Court of Appeals race could save Robert Roberson’s life

Terre Compton remembers the baby doll.

When an Anderson County prosecutor sat on the jury for Robert Roberson’s murder trial in East Texas 21 years ago, he picked up the doll and began shaking it – a startling visual demonstration of what Compton and her fellow jurors came to believe Roberson had harmed his two-year-old daughter, Nikki.

They voted to convict him of murder and sentence him to death. Since then, he has spent almost every day of his life in solitary confinement.

Compton never saw medical records showing that Nikki had severe pneumonia. She was never told that doctors had prescribed the little girl promethazine and codeine and that toxic levels of the drugs were found in her blood. In fact, Compton said Nikki’s medical history wasn’t even mentioned during the trial. What prosecutors made clear over and over again – with Roberson’s defense attorney apparently raising little to no objection – was that Nikki died because her father violently shook her in a fit of rage, causing “shake baby syndrome,” a medical theory that is now largely discredited.

Now that she knows these details, Compton’s doubts haunt her. During a 10-hour Texas House committee hearing on Monday, she told a bipartisan group of lawmakers that she was sorry to condemn him.

“Everything that was presented to us was about shaken baby syndrome, that’s what our decision was based on,” Compton said. “We were never presented with anything else to think about. If we had been told now, I would have disagreed and found him not guilty.”

Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton objected to the hearing, arguing that House members overstepped their authority when they called the hearing and subpoenaed Roberson to testify. The creative maneuver convinced the state Supreme Court to grant Roberson a temporary 90-day reprieve from the lethal injection.

Apparently Abbott and Paxton are more concerned with the pecking order and precedent than the prospect of executing an innocent man on their watch.

This editorial board opposes the death penalty, but it is still the law of the land in Texas, in part because officials have argued that the justice system allows for a robust appeals process that can expose serious errors and prevent the state from committing serious penalties. irreversible mistake of killing an innocent person. Texas even has a state law passed in 2013 that allows new trials if a conviction is based on scientific untruth. And yet, cases that fall through the cracks still happen, and some argue that Texas has already executed innocent people as a result.

No, we cannot and should not blindly trust the system. There’s a reason Texas law gives the governor the authority to intervene. In the Abbott case, he not only has the authority to act, but as a former attorney general and Texas Supreme Court justice, he also has the legal background to examine the facts and assess whether reported deficiencies in the case justify his intervention. And yet all he has done is belittle the actions of House members, Republican and Democrat, who were brave enough to do something even though he didn’t want them to.

We applaud these lawmakers, especially State Representatives Joe Moody (D-El Paso), Jeff Leach (R-McKinney), and Brian Harrison (R-Waxahachie). Their integrity in the face of seemingly grave injustice gives us hope.

Something else does too. It’s a twist that even Paxton couldn’t have foreseen when he plotted his petty revenge on an appeals judge who ruled against him on a matter that had nothing to do with him: The AG may have inadvertently given the power to voters to save Roberson.

Roberson’s 90-day stay pushes his execution date back to January, meaning three of the court’s five judges — Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey and Michelle Slaughter — who rejected Roberson’s legal motion last week will be replaced.

All three lost the Republican primary to candidates backed by Paxton, who is running hand-picked candidates in at least two of the three races. Paxton was upset that Keller, Hervey and Slaughter ruled against him in an 8-1 decision in 2021, denying him the ability to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud. While the Paxton-backed candidates for the bench are completely unqualified and inexperienced, a third Republican, David Schenck, has solid credentials as a former prosecutor and state appeals court judge.

We endorsed Schenck for the role of presiding judge because he made a name for himself as a reformer – he was chairman of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct – and because he strongly believed that the Court of Criminal Appeals had become overly partisan in its rulings in criminal cases is. We also endorsed Democrats Nancy Mulder and Chika Anyiam to replace Hervey and Slaughter, respectively, because they have years of judicial experience and are known as impartial jurists. We haven’t asked any of them specifically about the Roberson case – most judicial candidates decline to comment on active cases, citing judicial ethics – but we believe the likelihood of a Schenck-led court with Mulder and Anyiam are far greater than judges, would be more sympathetic to the Roberson case and possibly agree to a stay of execution.

Of course, that role could also be taken on by Abbott, who has the authority to issue an executive stay allowing the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to reexamine evidence of Roberson’s innocence. His silence is unconscionable, especially since earlier this year he pardoned a man convicted of killing a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020, an open-and-shut case that nonetheless became a cause célèbre for many Republicans. But even if some of Abbott’s donors and fellow Republicans line up behind Roberson, he can’t be bothered to lift a finger other than trying to block the Legislature from hearing Roberson’s testimony.

We are grateful that the Legislature filled the void left by Abbott and that the state Supreme Court granted Roberson a stay of execution. When one branch of government abdicates its responsibility, others must step in. Texans who value separation of powers and fairness in our criminal justice system would do well to remember this as they enter the voting booth.