Texas Lawmakers Temporarily Save Death Row Inmate Robert Roberson From the Execution Chamber
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 formerly called “shaken baby syndrome,” due to an unprecedented intervention by a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers.
Efforts by Roberson’s supporters to halt his imminent execution spilled over into a battle between the branches of the Texas government Thursday night after a state House committee issued a subpoena to Roberson to testify before it next Monday—a highly unusual move that had the practical effect of putting him under the aegis of the legislature’s subpoena authority.
A state district court issued a temporary stay of execution based on that subpoena, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), the state’s highest court for criminal cases, lifted the stay after the Texas Attorney General’s Office appealed it. However, Texas legislators filed an emergency motion with the Texas Supreme Court, which has jurisdiction over civil matters, asking it to issue an injunction against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to halt Roberson’s execution. The Texas Supreme Court granted the injunction, preserving Roberson’s life for now.
This all occurred hours before and after Roberson’s scheduled 6 p.m. execution by lethal injection.
“For over 20 years, Robert Roberson has spent 23.5 hours of every single day in a solitary confinement cell no bigger than the closets of most Texans, longing and striving to be heard,” Democrat and Republican state Reps. Joe Moody and Jeff Leach, respectively, 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 along with 31 million Texans, finally giving him—and the truth—a chance to be heard,” the lawmakers continued.
The baroque 11th-hour legal drama underscores the divisiveness of Roberson’s case and the intensity of the dispute surrounding shaken baby syndrome convictions. As Reason reported this August, Roberson was convicted in 2003 of murdering his two-year-old daughter based largely on expert findings of shaken baby syndrome, which is now called Abusive Head Trauma (AHT).Â
However, the scientific consensus surrounding AHT has shifted considerably in the decades since Roberson’s conviction, and his attorneys 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 show Roberson’s daughter died of advanced pneumonia. In addition, Roberson was subsequently diagnosed with autism, which his lawyers say led to doctors and police misinterpreting his behavior as callous.
Among those who believe in Roberson’s innocence—or at l
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