AUSTIN, TX – Not even a month ago, on Oct. 17, the date of Robert Roberson’s scheduled execution for the “shaken baby” death of his daughter, his legal team began a litigation brief in hopes of postponing his execution in light of new evidence under Article 11.073.
But the defense now charges the Texas Superior Court has failed to examine the evidence in three prior occasions where Roberson filed a complaint, according to the amicus brief.
The amicus brief includes the litigation team’s concerns regarding the Texas’ “changed-science law,” according to Article 11. 073, arguing it failed to provide Roberson relief “in the form of a new trial.”
Previously, the defense claimed Roberson tried using Article 11.073 to postpone his execution date in light of new evidence. However, the Court did not engage with the new evidence indicating the previous “Shaken Baby” diagnosis of his two-year-old daughter was unfounded.
It was, according to the brief, later determined the child died as the result of an “undiagnosed pneumonia and inappropriate respiratory suppressing medication prescribed days before her collapse.”
Roberson said he has hopes of “remaining alive so that he might testify as planned.”
His legal team attempted to intervene prior to his execution Oct. 17, and the defense said the motion is still pending, and its submission last Thursday provides a valuable example to the Article’s failure “to address the well-documented problem of wrongful convictions based on faulty, forensic sciences,” noted in the amicus brief.
Roberson’s case captures the intent of the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence’s incentive to observe policies intended to promote criminal justice, said the defense, but current legislation fails to serve its intended purpose.
Roberson’s Attorney, Gretchen Swain, per the amicus brief, “addresses and counters a wholly illegitimate use of power exercised by the Office of Attorney General (OAG) and ostensible amici who seek to distort and curtail the truth-seeking function of a legislative committee by filing material in the Court that is untethered to facts and reflects a brazen disregard for the rule of law.”
