Amid serious claims of innocence, Texas Supreme Court halts execution based on legislative subpoena

This local article, headlined “In stunning move, Texas Supreme Court halts Robert Roberson execution in ‘shaken baby’ case,” provides an effective review (with links) of the legal drama yesterday that ultimately halted a closely watched execution date. Here are just some excerpts of just some part of quite a story:

The Texas Supreme Court late Thursday spared Robert Roberson on the night he was set to die by lethal injection, a rare and head-spinning eleventh-hour decision in one of the most controversial death penalty cases in years.

The all-Republican court’s decision comes in response to a first-of-its-kind legal maneuver in which a state House committee voted to subpoena Roberson for a hearing scheduled days after his execution date. It could buy Roberson — who was set to become the first American executed for a conviction involving “shaken baby” syndrome at 6 p.m. Thursday — weeks or months to live as court proceedings continue to play out.

The order caps a whirlwind two-day effort from a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who feverishly fought to keep a man they believe to be innocent from the execution chamber and riveted the nation’s attention on Texas’ application of the death penalty. 

The House representatives who led the movement expressed relief in a Thursday night joint statement. “For over 20 years, Robert Roberson has spent 23.5 hours of every single day in solitary confinement in a cell no bigger than the closets of most Texans, longing and striving to be heard,” said Reps. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and Joe Moody, D-El Paso. “And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not.” 

The drama Thursday took off when Leach and Moody successfully asked a Travis County state District Court to temporarily stay the execution to allow Roberson to answer a summons that the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence unanimously approved Wednesday.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals shortly thereafter overturned that lower court’s approval of the lawmakers’ request in a 5-4 decision, and minutes later Leach and Moody filed an emergency motion with the Texas Supreme Court to intervene, arguing the Criminal Appeals Court lacked jurisdiction over a ruling made in a civil court. Leach posted on social media before the state Supreme Court’s decision that he was “Praying as if everything depends on God, which it does. But working as if everything depends on us.”

The state Supreme Court agreed with the lawmakers, with Justice Evan Young writing in a concurrence that “the underlying criminal-law matter is within the Court of Criminal Appeals’ authority, but the relief sought here is civil in nature, as are the claims that have been presented to the district court.”

Roberson’s case for a reprieve has drawn widespread support from more than 80 Texas House members as well as from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Dr. Phil and others.  After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition to delay the execution around 4 p.m. Thursday, Sotomayor wrote in a statement that “mounting evidence suggests … Roberson committed no crime at all.”  Sotomayor and others have urged Gov. Greg Abbott to grant Roberson a 30-day reprieve, but the governor has remained silent on the case.