The Texas Supreme Court stops Robert Roberson’s execution – for now

The Texas Supreme The court halted the scheduled execution of Robert Roberson late Thursday night after a bipartisan group of state lawmakers unleashed an extraordinary series of legal twists.

Lawmakers, including influential members of the House Criminal Justice Committee, used a series of jiu-jitsu-like moves to give Roberson a chance to prove his innocence. At the heart of their efforts was a law unique to Texas that allows people imprisoned based on flawed forensic tests to challenge their convictions.

“The great team fighting for Robert Roberson – people across Texas, across the country and around the world – are elated tonight that a group of courageous, bipartisan Texas lawmakers have decided to dig deep into the facts of Robert Roberson “I realized that his life was worth fighting for,” Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, said in a statement. “He lives to fight another day and hopes his experience can help improve the integrity of our criminal justice system.”

Roberson was sent to death row in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki. Doctors attributed the child’s death to so-called shaken baby syndrome (SBS): a diagnosis based on the assumption that a certain combination of injuries to a baby or toddler could only be caused by violent shaking. This theory has since been refuted by scientific research. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 34 people convicted of SBS have been exonerated across the country.

Roberson, who maintains his innocence, challenged his conviction using the state’s so-called junk science law. But Texas courts ignored the overwhelming evidence supporting the state’s case against him and green-lighted his execution on October 17. As that deadline approached, Roberson won the support of a bipartisan group of more than 80 Texas lawmakers, who called on both the board and the courts to spare his life.

Separation of powers

Less than two hours before Thursday’s scheduled execution at 6 p.m., Republican Rep. Jeff Leach of Texas and Democratic Rep. Joe Moody filed for an injunction to stop the state from killing Roberson. The day before, members of the Texas House of Representatives Criminal Justice Committee held an eight-hour hearing on the death penalty and the state’s junk science law. The hearing focused almost entirely on Roberson’s case and ended with the unprecedented decision to call him to testify at a hearing on October 21 – four days after his scheduled execution.

The lawmakers’ dramatic move came after the Texas Court of Appeals had already rejected Roberson’s latest appeal and the Pardon Board declined to recommend a pardon.

During a brief hearing Thursday afternoon before a judge in Austin, Moody argued that committee members have independent legal authority to call witnesses who are critical to their job of ensuring the state’s laws work as intended. In this case, Moody said hearing testimony made it “very clear” that Texas courts are not following junk science legislation.

“This is inappropriate, this is inappropriate,” he told the judge. “And if that is the case, it is absolutely within the jurisdiction of the legislature and within our power to be able to examine it. And that is the key reason why we need Mr. Roberson as a witness.”

Ed Marshall, an assistant attorney general, argued that “shaken baby syndrome simply does not play a role in Roberson’s case” and that the judge had no authority to overrule the appeals court’s decision to reject his appeals. Still, he acknowledged that the legislature’s subpoena was valid and lawful. The judge issued the injunction and the attorney general’s office appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which sided with the state and wrote that “no other court of this state has the authority to overrule or circumvent its decisions.” or disobeying its mandates.”

However, the actual decision on the matter was not the responsibility of the Criminal Appeal Court. While the court has jurisdiction over criminal matters in the state and has the final say, the injunction was issued as part of a civil case in which lawmakers were attempting to assert their legislative rights. The lawmakers appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which has the final say in civil cases, to state their case.

Just before midnight, the Supreme Court weighed in, saying the situation raised serious questions about the separation of powers. “The question implicates the distribution of authority among the three branches of government, pitting two branches against each other,” wrote Judge Evan Young. After the CCA rejected Roberson’s appeals, the state’s Department of Corrections – a branch of the executive branch – was tasked with carrying out the execution. Lawmakers flexed their muscles in an attempt to stop the ministry from doing so, triggering the conflict.

“Would carrying out an execution under these circumstances constitute an interference by the executive branch with the broad authority of the legislature?” Young wrote. “Or, on the contrary, would allowing various committees of the Legislature to summon an inmate facing a death sentence and run the risk of manipulating the judicial process… would constitute interference by the Legislature with the proper functioning of the law?”

Given this conflict, the Texas Supreme Court declared that the task of deciding the validity of the injunction rested with it, not with the appeals court.

A chance to be heard

The ruling resulted in the state being prevented from carrying out the execution for the time being. The Supreme Court asked the district court to quickly address separation of powers issues. Meanwhile, Roberson is expected to appear at the House committee hearing on Oct. 21.

Committee members are determined to change the junk science letter to ensure it works as intended and Roberson has the opportunity to claim its protections. Since the Texas Legislature only meets in odd-numbered years, this would likely mean Roberson’s execution would have to be held off until the fall of 2025.

The eleventh-hour stay of execution came many hours after Roberson’s legal options appeared to have been exhausted. His legal team had unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. In a statement, Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Roberson had not raised an issue that the federal court could easily address, but she echoed the concerns of Texas lawmakers and complained that convictions based on junk science prove difficult in court had proven to be revoked. “This case is emblematic of this problem,” she wrote. And while Sotomayor has previously urged states to pass junk science laws like Texas’, she noted that “this law tragically did not help Roberson in this case.”

Sotomayor criticized the appeals court for disparate treatment of Roberson in light of the Texas court’s decision last week to order a new trial in a separate case involving SBS. As the court “self-acknowledged, the scientific basis of shaken baby syndrome has since been significantly challenged,” the judge wrote. Roberson’s case relied on the same medical expert, she noted, and yet the court looked the other way. Although the Supreme Court did not have the authority to stop Roberson’s threatened execution, Sotomayor described it as a possible “miscarriage of justice.”

“Few cases require such relief more urgently than one in which the defendant has seriously demonstrated his actual innocence, as Roberson has done here.”

Moody and Leach celebrated the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling in a statement late Thursday night. “While some courts have failed him, the Texas House of Representatives has not,” they wrote.

“We are deeply grateful to the Texas Supreme Court for respecting the role of the Texas legislature in such momentous matters. 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.”