DALLAS — The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is making preparations to move Robert Roberson from his death row cell at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston to the state capitol in Austin on Monday where the condemned man will testify before a bipartisan group of state lawmakers.
The extraordinary move, seemingly unprecedented in Texas, happened late Thursday after the Texas House of Representatives Criminal Jurisprudence Committee subpoenaed Roberson to testify about his case and the Texas Supreme Court then agreed to temporarily pause his execution.
The legislative committee hearing at the capitol begins at noon on Monday.
Roberson will be one of multiple people testifying that day, lawmakers said, and will likely speak mid-afternoon under tight security.
“The criminal justice system has failed this man from the start. We need to have him come and testify in front of our committee to determine what laws we may need to change, the ways in which our laws might not be being adhered to because at the end of the day, this isn't some theoretical abstract exercise about whether the government got some auditing process correct, or some procurement procedures were violated, we're talking about matters of life and death and I say this as somebody who's been a longtime supporter of the death penalty,” state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, told WFAA on Friday.
Harrison and his colleagues on the committee want to know why Roberson did not get to use the Junk Science Law to have his case re-examined.
The Texas legislature passed it in 2013 to give inmates a legal pathway to ask for a new trial if they can show the science, forensics, or technology used to convict them was flawed or has changed since their conviction.
But lawmakers question why Texas judges are not applying the Junk Science Law in every case they’re presented.
“I think 10 or 15 people have had convictions overturned by this law. But in zero percent of the death row applications has there been applicability under this law,” Rep. Harrison added. “It came out in testimony. I was the one asking one of the one of the witnesses; if we didn't have this law on the books, would there be Texans rotting away in jails and prisons right now for crimes they didn't commit? And the answer was unequivocally, yes, and we can prove it.”
But lawmakers told WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics that they’re not sure what changes, if any, need to be made to the decade-old law.
“For us, it seems pretty clear. The statute is clear as to what needs to be done here and how it needs to be followed. The court is just choosing not to do it,” said state Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, in an interview for Sunday’s Inside Texas Politics. “This is supposed to grant relief, for people to be able to get a new trial. We don’t want innocent people in prison, we certainly do not want innocent people executed in Texas.”
Roberson is on death row for the murder of his 2-year-old daughter.
At the time, investigators said it appeared the child died from shaken baby syndrome. But in the two decades since Roberson’s conviction, scientists have discovered that children who die from natural causes also show similar symptoms as those who are violently shaken.
The original detective who investigated the case now says he thinks Roberson is innocent.
“We are in admittedly completely uncharted new legal waters here. But even though the board made its decision, which I didn't think they were going to, I don't know how anybody could hear the kind of expert medical testimony we heard, laying out a mountain of evidence that there was no murder committed, that there was no crime that even took place at all. The lead detective believes he's innocent and believes that there was no crime committed. Every medical expert that testified at our committee believes that there was no crime committed. I don't know what the Board of Pardons and Paroles was relying on when they made their decision, and I don't know when they made it,” Rep. Harrison continued.
But after Roberson testifies at the Monday hearing, what happens next?
His execution date is only on hold. It hasn’t been canceled.
Harrison and his colleagues said they hope Roberson’s new testimony, and the exposure it gets, will warrant another look by Governor Abbott, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, and the trial court.
“My hope is that one of the possible options is that the Board of Pardons could reconsider their own previous decision,” Rep. Harrison explained. “So, that's an option available to us also. The Governor still has his lawful prerogative to delay this thing for 30 days. I still hope that he exercises that. But here's the bottom line, if we hadn't issued that subpoena, Robert Roberson would almost certainly already be dead.”