A highly anticipated legislative hearing began Monday, but without a key witness: a Texas inmate execution for the death of his daughter “a shaken baby”. It was narrowly avoided last week.
Robert Roberson was expected to appear before the Texas House Committee on Criminal Justice in Austin after members on Wednesday issued a subpoena for him to testify about his case, launching proceedings that halted his execution late Thursday.
But Committee Chairman Joe Moody said he was uncomfortable with the state’s suggestion that Roberson appear via video link rather than in person, given the inmate’s autism and lack of familiarity with technology.
“When I thought about the places to build, I put his needs as a person with a disability above all else,” Moody said.
The status of his planned testimony remains in negotiations amid legal disputes, and Moody added that he wants all stakeholders to “come together for our goal here, which is to ensure that Robert is heard.”
An unprecedented attempt by Roberson’s defense team to move him from a jail near Houston to the capital became a legal battle after the attorney general’s office challenged the move in an emergency appeal to the state’s Texas Supreme Court over the weekend. The the high court, however, said on Sunday he will not rule on the order in which Roberson testified.
The attorney general’s office said it would not bring him to Monday’s hearing in person, citing security concerns and the lack of a state facility near Austin that could temporarily house him. He said it can be seen virtually.
Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court has set filing deadlines for the coming days to resolve the separation of powers issue after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees executions, challenged a high court order blocking Roberson’s execution.
Roberson, 57, has pleaded not guilty to the 2002 death of her 2-year-old daughter Nikki. based on “shaken baby syndrome”.” He would be the first person executed in the United States in such a case, which his defense team argued hinged on a now-widespread medical diagnosis. etccit was strongly contested in other convictions across the country.
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Criminal Justice said Friday that the agency would comply with the subpoena, without commenting on the logistics of Roberson’s potential in-person appearance before the House committee.
Committee members want him to testify because it’s related to a 2013 “junk science” law that allows Texas inmates to potentially challenge convictions based on advances in forensic science. The subpoena was issued to help buy more time for Roberson, who still faces execution if the attorney general’s office seeks another death sentence.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could also grant a one-time 30-day reprieve, but in a letter to the Texas Supreme Court on Monday, his attorney said he supported the state’s efforts to challenge how House committee members were able to halt the execution. argued that the courts exceeded their powers.
“Unless the court rejects this tactic, it could be repeated in every capital case and effectively rewrite the Constitution to redefine the power vested solely in the Governor,” Abbott’s lawyer said.
Roberson’s case has won the support of a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers who believe Nikki was unfairly convicted without hearing the full evidence of her chronic illness beyond what happened before her death.
one interview from prison “I’d like the public to know I’m innocent,” Roberson told NBC News host Lester Holt this month.
Roberson said that on Jan. 31, 2002, he woke up to a “strange scream” in his east Texas home and saw Nikki fall out of bed. He comforted her and the family went back to sleep, according to court documents.
But hours later, Roberson woke up to find Nikki not breathing and her lips looking blue. He took her to the emergency room, where doctors concluded that she was showing signs of brain death. He was pronounced dead the next day.
Roberson showed little emotion at the hospital, raising the suspicions of law enforcement. Within a day, Detective Senior Constable Brian Wharton arrested him on a charge of capital murder.
Prosecutors argued that Nikki must have been concussed because she was diagnosed with the “triple” – a swollen and bleeding brain and retinal haemorrhage – symptoms previously believed to be incontrovertible evidence. shaken baby syndrome.
He testified against Roberson at Wharton’s trial. Prosecutors said they believe Roberson intentionally shook Nikki, causing bruises and blunt force trauma, and that she appeared almost emotionless when she was taken to the hospital.
Roberson attributed his “straightforward influence” to his autism spectrum disorder, which he was diagnosed with in 2018.
The jury also did not hear how ill Nikki had been since birth, having been hospitalized more than 40 times in her short life.
Two days before his death, he registered a temperature of 104.5 degrees at the doctor’s office. She has since been sent home with a drug considered too dangerous for children — one that now carries a “black box warning” from the Food and Drug Administration.
Since Roberson’s conviction in 2003, the science behind the triad, the sole diagnosis of abuse, has come under intense scrutiny, and it is now a medical consensus that other medical conditions, including infections, accidental trauma, and pre-existing illnesses, can also cause symptoms. associated with shaken baby syndrome.
Wharton, the lead detective in the case, also supported Roberson, telling House committee members at a hearing last week: “This is definitely an innocent man.”
However, Anderson County prosecutors continue to insist in court filings that Nikki was murdered and that Roberson was guilty, noting how they lost their appeals and that his defense “raised the same tired issues that this court and others have already raised in court.” recent Habeas proceedings, including junk science, disease process, and actual innocence.