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3 days ago
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won’t abandon his ugly campaign to deny justice to Robert Roberson, even as Roberson’s lawyers keep discrediting his conviction in the death of his 2-year-old daughter.
This week, Paxton’s office requested a new execution date for Roberson despite the fact that a new appeal on Roberson’s behalf is pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Perhaps even more unusual is the fact that Paxton’s office is involved at all. The attorney general’s office has taken over the prosecution, reportedly at the request of Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, who has litigated the case for years.
A competent and principled attorney general, faced with overwhelming evidence casting doubt on a conviction, wouldn’t insist on executing a man who may very well be innocent. But Texans can’t expect diligence or integrity from Ken Paxton, even when the matter at hand is the taking of someone’s life.
Roberson became a familiar name last year. He was convicted of killing his toddler, Nikki, in a 2003 trial in Anderson County that rested on a theory of “shaken baby syndrome” that has fallen out of favor based on newer scientific research. After years of unsuccessful appeals, Roberson was scheduled to die on Oct. 17, but a last-minute maneuver from Texas House lawmakers stopped the execution. Democratic and Republican lawmakers subpoenaed Roberson to testify before them about the state’s “junk science” law. Then Paxton stepped in, blocking Roberson from appearing before legislators.
We have written previously about the flaws in Roberson’s original trial, the unreliable nature of “shaken baby” diagnoses and questions about the impartiality of a judge in this case. Roberson should be given a new trial and his attorneys given an opportunity to present evidence about Nikki’s medical conditions that was not considered by the previous jury.
Paxton should be preoccupied with ensuring justice. Instead, he has made it his mission to impede it. Last year, his office broadcast an unsubstantiated allegation against Roberson that police had already rejected more than 20 years ago.
In a filing with the Court of Criminal Appeals, Roberson’s lawyers are asking the court to find him innocent, or at least grant him a new trial or an opportunity to make new arguments in a trial court. The attorneys cite a joint statement by 10 pathologists calling into question the medical examiner’s findings in Nikki’s death. The lawyers also want Roberson’s case reconsidered in light of the November exoneration of another man who had been convicted of injuring a child. That man was originally convicted based on testimony from the same doctor who testified in Roberson’s trial about shaken baby diagnoses.
What else does Roberson need to do to show he deserves a new trial? Even supporters of the death penalty should see the injustice of proceeding with the execution of a man whose conviction rests on such a rickety foundation.
