The Texas supreme court on Friday ruled that a legislative subpoena cannot be used to stop an execution after Republican and Democratic lawmakers used the novel maneuver to pause Robert Roberson’s lethal injection at the last minute.
The ruling addressed a subpoena issued for Roberson by the Texas house criminal jurisprudence committee last month that was seen as a way to delay his execution.
But the high court ruled 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”, wrote the Republican justice Evan Young, issuing the opinion of the court.
Roberson was scheduled to die by lethal injection on 17 October when lawmakers, in a last-ditch effort, issued a subpoena to have him testify at the Texas state capitol days after he was scheduled to be executed.
A new execution date for Roberson has not been set, but it is certain to move forward unless the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, grants a 30-day reprieve.
This spurred a legal conundrum between the state’s criminal and civil courts, which ultimately led to the Texas supreme court temporarily ruling in Roberson’s favor.
Roberson was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. He has gained bipartisan support from lawmakers and medical experts who say he was convicted on faulty evidence of “shaken baby syndrome”, which refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact.
Roberson would be the first person in the United States to be executed for killing a child in this manner.
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Prosecutors said that Roberson killed his daughter by shaking her violently back and forth. Roberson’s attorneys have argued that she probably died from complications with severe pneumonia.
The supreme court, which handles civil matters, made clear it was not ruling on the merits of whether Roberson was guilty or innocent of capital murder or on the evidence in question. Those questions reside with the criminal courts, which have so far denied Robinson’s appeals, the supreme court said.
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