Following a flood of media coverage and days of intense legal maneuvering, Texas father Robert Roberson is still alive, after the state supreme court issued a temporary reprieve minutes before he was scheduled to be executed last evening.
All of Robert’s appeals and petitions had been denied, but on Wednesday the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in the state’s House issued a subpoena for Roberson to appear for a hearing next Monday, a move that raised a jurisdictional dispute and led to a series of motions, counter-motions, and, eventually, a stay, for now.
“The vast team fighting for Robert Roberson – people all across Texas, the country, and the world – are elated tonight that a contingent of brave, bipartisan Texas lawmakers chose to dig deep into the facts of Robert’s case that no court had yet considered and recognized that his life was worth fighting for,” Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween said Thursday night.
Roberson enjoys the support of the Innocence Project; a number of physicians, scientists, and attorneys who question the SBS hypothesis; a majority of the Texas state legislators; and his own friends and family as well as other wrongly accused families, autism and disability-rights groups, and attorney/novelist John Grisham.
For more from this blog on Robert’s case, please see Looming Execution in Texas Stirs Action Worldwide and Hustling to Stop an Execution. If you haven’t yet signed the Innocence Project petition to stop the execution, the petition is still active and the number of signers is still growing.
Meanwhile, the case has triggered local, national, and international media coverage, shining a much-needed spotlight on the debate surrounding Shaken Baby Syndrome. Some of the news treatments:
- CNN: How a stunning 11th-hour race to save a Texas death row inmate from execution in ‘shaken baby’ case unfolded
- Texas Tribune: Texas Supreme Court temporarily stops Robert Roberson’s execution
- The Guardian: Texas supreme court blocks execution of man in late-night ruling
- CBS: Texas Supreme Court orders last-minute stay of execution for Robert Roberson
- Reuters: Texas top court blocks execution of man in shaken baby syndrome case
- BBC: Texas judge blocks execution of man in shaken baby case
- Austin American Statesman: In stunning move, Texas Supreme Court halts Robert Roberson execution in ‘shaken baby’ case
- AP: Texas was about to execute Robert Roberson. Then a last-ditch tactic bought him more time
- New York Times: What We Know About the Execution Pending in the Shaken Baby Case
-Sue Luttner
If you are not familiar with the debate around Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma, please see the home page of this site.
On Shaken Baby 