Texas lawmakers are anticipated to listen to testimony on the state Capitol on Monday from Robert Roberson, a loss of life row inmate whose execution was quickly known as off final week.
Roberson, 57, had been scheduled to die by deadly injection Thursday for the killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in 2002. However as scientific developments lately known as into query basic features of his case and conviction, authorities began to query his guilt. Roberson was convicted of capital homicide in his daughter’s loss of life from shaken child syndrome, a situation as soon as used as proof of kid abuse that specialists now contemplate outdated and too imprecise to assist a legal cost.
Evolutions in how scientific and medical communities perceive the syndrome and its signs have led to at the least a dozen exonerations in the US during the last couple of a long time. However prosecutors and the courts argue there’s proof of Roberson’s guilt exterior of Curtis’ analysis, even because the lead investigator who helped convict him of homicide has brazenly proclaimed the person’s innocence and acknowledged his workplace’s personal errors judging Roberson’s habits earlier than studying of his autism.
Roberson maintains he didn’t kill his daughter. He can be the primary individual within the U.S. put to loss of life for a conviction linked to shaken child syndrome if his execution finally ends up shifting ahead.
Michael Wyke / AP
Hours earlier than it was set to happen Thursday, a Travis County choose granted a brief restraining order to pause the process, in order that he would have the ability to testify earlier than a bipartisan group of state lawmakers on the Texas Home Prison Justice Committee. The committee had one night time earlier subpoenaed Roberson to provide testimony on the listening to, which is able to tackle “legal process associated to capital punishment” and a landmark “junk science” legislation that ought to enable Texas inmates to attraction their convictions when the scientific or forensic proof used to convict them has been debunked or decided unreliable.
The subpoena got here on the heels of a suggestion by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier within the day denying Roberson’s request for clemency, successfully stopping Gov. Greg Abbott from granting clemency with out the court docket’s intervention. Abbott might nonetheless delay the execution by 30 days by means of an govt reprieve.
The Texas Courtroom of Prison Appeals reversed the county choose’s non permanent restraining order. Then, because the U.S. Supreme Courtroom denied a request for a keep of Roberson’s execution — with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing in her ruling that the “Supreme Courtroom is powerless to behave with no colorable federal declare” — the Texas Supreme Courtroom halted the execution. Its eleventh-hour resolution granted a civil attraction filed by Roberson’s attorneys and state lawmakers.
“Whether or not the legislature could use its authority to compel the attendance of witnesses to dam the manager department’s authority to implement a sentence of loss of life is a query of Texas civil legislation, not its legal legislation,” Texas Supreme Courtroom Justice Evan Younger mentioned in his opinion.
Find out how to watch Robert Roberson’s testimony
- What: Demise row inmate Robert Roberson is anticipated to provide testimony earlier than the Texas Home Prison Justice Committee.
- Date: Monday, Oct. 21, 2024
- Time: 1 p.m. EDT
- Location: The Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas.
- On-line stream: Stay on CBS Information Texas within the participant above and in your cellular or streaming machine.
