Political differences over Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson's claim of innocence are heating up

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A week after the death of death row inmate Robert Roberson, the extraordinary attempt to save his life has turned into an intensifying political battle between Texas House Democrats and the state's top Republicans as they level bitter accusations and spreading contradictory narratives surrounding his guilt – or probably innocence.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday condemned the bipartisan Texas House committee that forced a delay in Roberson's execution, saying it was “out of line.”

Attorney General Ken Paxton insisted on Roberson's guilt in a stark press release Wednesday, accusing the committee of engaging in “unilateral, last-minute, extrajudicial ploys that attempt to obscure the facts and rewrite his past.”

In turn, lawmakers accused Paxton of publishing a “misleading and, to a large extent, simply untrue” summary of Roberson’s case.

State Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, along with Reps. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, Rhetta Andrews Bowers, D-Rowlett, and Lacey Hull, R-Houston, released a 16-page, point-by-point rebuttal on Thursday pending Paxton's release, including citations and exhibits shown at trial and since restored during the appeal process.

The attorney general's office included the autopsy report of Roberson's 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, whom he was convicted of killing, as well as a statement from the medical examiner who conducted the inquest. Otherwise, however, Paxton largely referred to the trial record and did not acknowledge any of the new evidence presented in Roberson's appeals.

“The OAG statement contains no new facts, just a collection of exaggerations, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods that are completely independent of facts and context,” Moody wrote on social media Thursday.

The political dispute over Roberson's execution was the result of the unusual shift in the locus of debate over his case from the courtroom to the broader public discourse – a shift brought about by courts dismissing all of Roberson's appeals and lawmakers by his probable innocence or at least of a failure of the courts, turned to their bully pulpit to intervene.

As part of a rare campaign to prevent Roberson's execution, the Texas Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence held two one-day hearings at which a number of experts and lawyers testified live to his innocence.

“These people believe that Robert is not guilty,” Moody, Leach, Bowers and Hull wrote in their rebuttal. “These people know Robert didn’t get a fair trial.”

The conflict of narratives about Roberson's guilt or innocence has played out in public spaces ever since — at the Texas Capitol, on social media and in dueling press releases — turning every observer into a quasi-juror, judge and potential executioner.

Shortly after Roberson's execution was halted, Paxton intervened and thwarted plans for Roberson to testify in person before the House Criminal Justice Committee at the Capitol. His office said Roberson would only testify via video “in the interest of public safety,” which Roberson's attorney and the committee objected to.

Doug Deason, a GOP megadonor and Abbott ally, called Paxton's release “completely out of step with reality,” while former Texas Republican Party chairman Matt Rinaldi called Roberson's lawyer's reaction to the release “gaslighting at its finest.” designated.

Roberson was convicted in 2003 of murdering his chronically ill daughter. He has maintained his innocence over two decades on death row while unsuccessfully trying to use Texas' 2013 junk science law to argue that the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome at the heart of his conviction is not scientifically sound be.

The Texas Supreme Court halted Roberson's execution on Oct. 17 after a subpoena issued by the House panel raised a separation of powers issue between the state's legislative and executive branches. Roberson still faces the death penalty, but his execution has been postponed pending resolution of this constitutional conflict.

The argument put forward by Paxton, the state's top law enforcement official, to continue Roberson's death sentence relied on a sometimes misleading and incomplete summary of his trial – which itself, Roberson's supporters say, was tainted by a discredited, shattered baby diagnosis and incomplete, unverified and biased allegations of sexual abuse, bias against a man with undiagnosed autism, and unreliable statements about Roberson's story.

Roberson's supporters point to a wealth of new scientific and medical evidence that suggests Nikki died of undiagnosed pneumonia that suppressed her breathing and was made worse by medications no longer prescribed to children, causing bleeding and swelling in her body brain led.

In Thursday's rebuttal, deputies refuted Paxton's claims that Nikki suffered severe bruising when Roberson took her to the hospital and that she died not only from violent concussions but also from “blunt force head injuries” from beatings.

The autopsy photos showed “almost no external injuries” – a fact the state acknowledged at trial when it asked the medical examiner who performed the autopsy to explain the “huge discrepancy” between “what you see on the outside, and what you see “bat inside.” The lack of external injuries actually led a doctor to diagnose shaken baby syndrome, the lawmakers wrote.

In response to Paxton's claim that Roberson had a history of violence and domestic violence, lawmakers argued that the witnesses who made that statement in court had serious credibility issues and had not provided corroborating evidence.

They also condemned Paxton's reference to another inmate's claim that Roberson had admitted to molesting his daughter – an account so dubious that even prosecutors did not include it in their case.

“By including this information, the OAG has repeated a lie, at best with complete indifference to the truth,” the lawmakers wrote. “The 'prison snitch' here spun a story so completely contradictory to the evidence that prosecutors did not use it at trial.”

And they highlighted the “mountain of evidence and changing science that has accumulated since Robert's trial – the same changing science that led the Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn another shocked Dallas County baby conviction this month.” .”

In response to Paxton's release, Roberson's lawyers released their own 27-page rebuttal on Thursday.

“We know that the laws our legislature created to address these problems have not worked as intended for Robert and people like him,” the lawmakers wrote. “That is why we are here and that is why we will not give up.”