Join The Transient, The Texas Tribune’s day by day e-newsletter that retains readers up to the mark on probably the most important Texas information.
A Texas Home Committee was left with out its key witness on Friday after Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton filed a movement late Thursday barring dying row inmate Robert Roberson from testifying on the Capitol.
The bipartisan Home Committee on Felony Jurisprudence had deliberate to listen to immediately from Roberson on Friday at midday about his failed efforts to overturn his capital homicide conviction utilizing the state’s junk science regulation, which grants new trials in instances that relied on scientific proof that’s later discredited.
However Paxton’s movement, which argued that the panel’s subpoena to Roberson was “procedurally deficient and overly burdensome,” excused the state jail system from complying with the committee’s subpoena and permitting Roberson to testify in individual.
That left the way forward for Roberson’s testimony unclear.
Lawmakers have tried for weeks to deliver him to Austin after the Texas Supreme Courtroom famous in November that state officers ought to be capable to produce Roberson for testimony in compliance with a subpoena that doesn’t intervene with a scheduled execution. After the committee’s first subpoena expired, it served him with one other one this week.
Roberson was convicted of capital homicide in 2003 for the dying of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki, who was identified with shaken child syndrome. He has argued that new scientific proof discredits Nikki’s prognosis and exhibits she died of pure and unintended causes.
The primary subpoena from the Texas Home Committee on Felony Jurisprudence in search of Roberson’s testimony pressured a delay of his scheduled October execution. That led to a Texas Supreme Courtroom ruling on Nov. 15 that mentioned a legislative subpoena of a dying row inmate couldn’t be used to postpone an execution.
Roberson’s execution has not but been rescheduled. The district legal professional in his case has not but requested that the court docket set a brand new execution date, which couldn’t land inside 90 days of her request.
An important Texas information,
despatched weekday mornings.
Reps. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and Jeff Leach, R-Plano, have accused the legal professional basic’s workplace of stalling Roberson’s testimony till the panel robotically dissolves subsequent month with the beginning of the brand new legislative session.
In his movement to dam Roberson’s testimony, Paxton requested the court docket to carry a listening to earlier than it decides whether or not to grant his request. However he requested that the listening to not be set earlier than Jan. 13, 2025, saying he “will be out of the country.”
The brand new legislative session begins — and the committee disbands — on Jan. 14.
“The attorney general’s office knows that and is trying to delay until the start of the next session, which is just horrifying and maddening to me,” Leach mentioned at an occasion with the Tribune on Dec. 6.
Paxton’s workplace, which legally represents the jail system, has hamstrung earlier efforts to safe Roberson’s in-person testimony by insisting that nothing legally compels the chief department to deliver him to the Capitol.
Fifteen emails between Moody and Paxton’s workplace obtained by the Tribune doc the continuing tensions between lawmakers and the chief department over Roberson’s case.
In response to the committee’s first subpoena, Paxton’s workplace sunk plans for Roberson to testify at an Oct. 21 listening to in individual and mentioned that the inmate would solely be permitted to seem nearly resulting from public security considerations — an association the panel opposed resulting from Roberson’s autism.
As a substitute, Moody instructed that the committee may journey to dying row and take Roberson’s testimony there. However after Moody adjourned the Oct. 21 listening to, Paxton’s workplace shut that chance down.
“The subpoena issued to Mr. Roberson required his testimony on Monday, and TDCJ did not impede Mr. Roberson’s compliance with the subpoena, going so far as to attempt to facilitate his appearance via Zoom,” Kimberly Gdula, the legal professional basic’s chief of basic litigation, wrote to Moody on Oct. 25. “The House’s subpoena has now expired, and the committee has adjourned.”
After the Texas Supreme Courtroom issued its ruling that Roberson may testify so long as it didn’t intervene with an execution, Moody requested Gdula in an electronic mail if they may attain an settlement on having Roberson testify with out requiring a brand new subpoena.
On Dec. 6, Gdula despatched a collection of questions and situations, and sought to bar Moody from immediately contacting the Texas Division of Felony Justice, which operates the state prisons.
She requested “why Roberson could not furnish any needed testimony through safer alternatives like remote appearance by video,” and claimed that the workplace “had no information as to what topics you intend to discuss that only Roberson would be able to provide relevant testimony on.”
She additionally wrote that representatives from the legal professional basic’s workplace, the Anderson County District Legal professional’s workplace and Gov. Greg Abbott’s workplace had “a right to be present at any hearing where Roberson is testifying so they may assert any objections to questions that go beyond the scope of the Committee’s limited authority to question a death-row inmate.”
Moody rejected the situations, reiterating the committee’s opposition to a digital look resulting from Roberson’s autism, referencing public supplies describing the committee’s reasoning in in search of Roberson’s testimony and noting that the committee and TDCJ had addressed varied security and logistical points on Oct. 18 — earlier than Paxton’s workplace stepped in.
“This is a subpoena, so any opinion related to ‘the import of Roberson’s testimony’ does not authorize disobedience of it,” he wrote. “Anyone may attend this public hearing, but no one will be recognized to ‘assert any objections’ because this is not an adversarial proceeding and there is no judge to whom you may object.”
Moody and Leach, on the Tribune’s Dec. 6 occasion, vowed to proceed combating for Roberson regardless of opposition from the legal professional basic’s workplace — and even via the beginning of a brand new legislative session.
“We will not relent in the pursuit of justice for Mr. Roberson,” Leach mentioned. “If they want to thumb their nose in the face of the Legislature that egregiously and blatantly, they can be — and should be — assured that a new committee next session … will issue a new subpoena if we have to.”
