Had Robert Roberson III been executed by the state of Texas last Thursday night as scheduled, it would have been a shameful failure of our criminal justice system.
Out of appeals, Roberson would have been put to death even as his conviction on outdated “shaken baby syndrome” science in the death of his 2-year-old daughter was shrouded in tremendous doubt.
Instead, a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, some of whom actually support the death penalty, boldly prevented that from happening. Their last-minute legal maneuver to issue a subpoena requiring Roberson to testify before the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence hearing Monday morning effectively stayed the execution, at least for now.
The unprecedented move, led by Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, to effectively go around the state’s judicial branch does raise valid questions about a potential violation of the state’s constitutionally enshrined separation of powers among the legislative, judicial and executive branches.
Those concerns may well be headed for a full airing in court, as the Texas Supreme Court noted while agreeing to uphold the House subpoena.
But if ever there was a case to test the limits of those separations, it’s this one. The fact is, it should have never come to all of this.
The House committee hearing has brought into full public view, on live-streamed video, a distressing set of facts surrounding Roberson’s case and the way the criminal justice system has dug into his conviction. The committee is studying whether the state’s “junk science” law, that provides a pathway for new trials for those convicted on the basis of discredited science, has worked as intended in Roberson’s case.
In 2003, an Anderson County jury convicted Roberson in the death of his daughter largely on a doctor’s diagnosis that she had suffered from “shaken baby syndrome.” Back then, doctors believed the syndrome was the only explanation for three different types of internal head injuries in small children, absent a serious accident. But today, doctors realize that these same symptoms can be caused by other things, as well.
Roberson’s attorneys contend that the jury never heard evidence of some of those causes, and that the district attorney rushed to convict. Even Roberson’s defense attorney said at trial that this was a textbook “shaken baby” case, though his client maintained his innocence and rejected plea bargain deals.
Roberson’s attorneys today have brought to light the fact that the child, Nikki, had been chronically ill most of her life, and most especially in the week before her death. They say doctors who have reviewed her records, as well as slides of her lung tissue, have concluded that Nikki likely died from undiagnosed pneumonia, made worse by drugs prescribed to her by doctors in the days before her death. Other blunt force injuries to the child’s head noted by the medical examiner could be explained by the sick child’s fall off a bed as well as efforts made by her doctors in the hospital to save her life, her attorneys contend.
Terre Compton, one of the jurors who convicted Roberson, told the House committee Monday that had she known all of that, she would not have voted to convict Roberson. She also repeatedly testified that prosecutors at the time made it clear that this was solely a “shaken baby” case. So insistent were they, she recalled, that in driving home their case they violently shook, in front of jurors, either a stuffed bear or doll to demonstrate how Roberson killed his daughter.
Compton’s testimony is significant because the district attorney today, as well as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, has said that Roberson is not eligible for a new trial because his conviction was not solely based on the “shaken baby” diagnosis but also evidence that Nikki sustained other injuries. But evidence of other signs of abuse has now been seriously called into question and may be explained by other things. Compton told the committee she now thinks Roberson is innocent.
Of course, Compton is one of only many involved in the case who now have serious doubts. They include the former lead detective, who says the state got it all wrong; more than 80 bipartisan lawmakers who have petitioned the criminal appeals court to reconsider the case; Phil McGraw and author John Grisham, both of whom told the committee that they fully investigated the case and believe Roberson did not get a fair trial; even U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who took the unusual step last week of publicly saying that Roberson has made a “serious showing of actual innocence.”
Can all those people be wrong? Or did the state get it wrong? Did the criminal appeals court, which ruled just 5-4 earlier this month to uphold the execution, consider the full facts? We note that the appeals court, on its own power and authority, could reconsider and grant Roberson a new trial based on the state’s junk science law. Just one vote would need to change. We urge it to do so.
We also note that Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, who was not in office at the time of Roberson’s conviction, could also reconsider the case in light of Compton’s testimony and other details revealed at the House committee hearing. We urge her to do so, as well.
And finally we urge our governor, a lawyer himself, to look carefully at the facts in this case and to ask himself, given all we know now, given all of the doubt that has been raised, whether our state can in good conscience put this man to death.
This editorial board is not a trier of fact, but in light of so much overwhelming evidence and the extraordinary acts of a group of bipartisan legislators in recent days, Roberson deserves a new day in court.
