After a nearly one-month delay in a scheduled execution, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday lifted its stay and ruled that state legislators cannot halt executions by using their subpoena power, the Texas Tribune reports. The court had temporarily blocked the scheduled Oct. 17 execution of Robert Roberson to consider whether the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee had the power to use a legislative subpoena to stall the execution. The committee had called on the 57-year-old East Texan convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter to testify about his criminal case at the Texas Capitol four days after his scheduled execution. Roberson was convicted of murdering his chronically-ill, 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis, who Roberson said in 2002 had fallen off the bed at the family home in Palestine before he rushed her to the emergency room. A doctor diagnosed Nikki with shaken baby syndrome, which presumes abuse. Roberson’s defense attorney did not dispute the diagnosis during trial, only arguing that Roberson did not intend to kill his daughter. But in the years since the trial, new scientific and medical evidence has emerged showing that the symptoms associated with shaken baby syndrome could also point to naturally occurring medical conditions. In multiple appeals over the past two decades, experts raised evidence that Nikki had undiagnosed pneumonia in the days before her fall and that it progressed to the point of sepsis and suppressed her breathing. She was also prescribed medications no longer given to infants.
“We conclude that under these circumstances the committee’s authority to compel testimony does not include the power to override the scheduled legal process leading to an execution,” the Friday court ruling stated. “By requiring his testimony on a date after the scheduled execution, the subpoena created a conflict involving all three branches of government,” justices wrote Friday. Roberson’s death sentence remains intact, but a new execution must be scheduled. The supreme court ruling noted there’s time for Roberson’s testimony to be heard by the committee. “If the committee still wishes to obtain his testimony, we assume that the (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) department can reasonably accommodate a new subpoena,” the court ruling stated. “So long as a subpoena issues in a way that does not inevitably block a scheduled execution, nothing in our holding prevents the committee from pursuing judicial relief in the ordinary way to compel a witness’s testimony.”
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