DALLAS — The war of words over the fate of Robert Leslie Roberson III has the lawmakers who are seeking a new trial and the state's Attorney General airing their respective grievances, and their evidence, on social media.
Attorney General Ken Paxton made his stance clear, titling his post on X, "Office of the Attorney General Sets the Records Straight About Nikki Curtis's Death, Rebutting Jeff Leach's and Joe Moody's Lies About Convicted Child Murderer."
State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso) responded by writing "There are no new facts in the OAG's statement, only a collection of exaggerations, misrepresentations, and full-on untruths completely divorced from fact and context."
"I would say that things have taken a very dark turn," said Roberson's attorney Gretchen Sween.
Paxton, on Wednesday, posted the entire autopsy report for 2-year-old Nikki Curtis: the autopsy that brought her father Robert Roberson the death penalty in 2003. The original autopsy report listed the cause of death as blunt force head injuries and the manner of death as homicide.
"According to doctors testifying at the trial, Nikki died from substantial blunt force head injuries that clearly indicated the girl had been struck." Paxton wrote, saying that "Roberson was lawfully sentenced to death," and that "a few legislators have grossly interfered with the justice system by disregarding the separation of powers outlined in the State Constitution. They have created a Constitutional crisis on behalf of a man who beat his two-year-old daughter to death."
Paxton also cited a "contemporaneous police report" where Roberson allegedly admitted to a cellmate that he had sexually assaulted his daughter.
"When something is issued to the world by the Attorney General's office with the seal of Texas on it where almost every sentence in it is a misrepresentation," said Sween, "this is truly a low point that I as a lawyer find so offensive. This is what gives lawyers a bad name and it's coming from the state's Attorney General's office."
Sween responded to the Attorney General's social media post by posting a 27-page rebuttal citing what she says are 12 "misrepresentations" of the facts: including no consideration for the child's complex medical history, that Nikki did not have extensive external injuries, that no evidence exists that the child was sexually assaulted and that the "cellmate" mentioned by the Attorney General was found to be an unreliable jailhouse informant who volunteered purported jailhouse confessions "in hopes of obtaining leniency for himself."
"Now there is this fiction about this trail of violence he supposedly perpetrated that is not supported by the record," said Sween. "But to see things surface 20 years later that was so outrageous in their deception back in the day that they were not even put before a jury now being thrown into a statement by the highest law enforcement in the state? It is shocking to me."
Members of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee are still planning to interview Roberson in person. Negotiations continue over how, when, and where that will happen.
For now, his execution is on hold, without a new date set, while the war of words continues.