AUSTIN, Texas (KETK) – Last week, Robert Roberson was served with an unprecedented subpoena to testify before the Texas House of Representatives. The hearing was supposed to happen Monday at noon, however, at the last minute, a committee member told Nexstar he will not be coming in person. He could later testify virtually, the lawmaker said.
The Texas Supreme Court intervened on Thursday night to halt the planned execution of Roberson, a Palestine, Texas man, who was sentenced to death for the killing of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in 2003.
The Texas Supreme Court’s intervention allowed him to comply with a subpoena issued on Wednesday by the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.
A letter from the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will make Roberson available to testify virtually over Zoom due to safety concerns.
Gretchen Sween, an attorney for Roberson, issued a statement to the Quorum Report saying that Roberson’s autism would defeat the purpose of the hearing if he’s not allowed to participate in person.
“Requiring Robert to communicate over Zoom would unquestionably handicap him and thwart the whole point of the hearing… which is allowing the committee to hear from him, to see him, to ‘witness’ him and to assess his credibility,” said Sween. “He wants to come to the Texas Capitol to finally be heard in person even if he has to wear his shackles and chains to do so.”
The unprecedented summons from the bipartisan committee was made following a campaign pushing for mercy in Roberson’s case in light of new questions surrounding shaken baby syndrome science used to convict Roberson in the first place.
For the Texas Supreme Court, the subpoena raised a previously unexplored problem in Texas civic law. If the legislative branch, which creates criminal law, can stop an execution from being carried out by the executive branch then, according to the Texas Supreme Court, that creates a separation of powers issue within the different branches of government.
“Whether the legislature may use its authority to compel the attendance of witnesses to block the executive branch’s authority to enforce a sentence of death is a question of Texas civil law, not its criminal law. The question implicates the distribution of authority among the three branches of government, pitting two branches against each other,” Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan A. Young said in his opinion on their ruling to halt Roberson’s death.
Republican State Rep. Brian Harrison told The Washington Post that the committee hearing will discuss how a law on junk science that could’ve saved Roberson from being executed hasn’t been applied to his case.
Committee chairman State Rep. Joe Moody, D- El Paso, and State Rep. Jeff Leach R-McKinney, issued the following statement ahead of the hearing:
“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. And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not. We’re deeply grateful to the Texas Supreme Court for respecting the role of the Texas legislature in such consequential matters. 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.”