Afrigather Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was notable in his silence and lack of involvement throughout this week’s unprecedented bipartisan effort by Texas lawmakers to win an execution reprieve for demise row inmate Robert Roberson, political analysts stated. File Photograph by Tannen Maury/UPI | License Photograph
Oct. 19 (UPI) — A frantic and unprecedented rush by Texas lawmakers to efficiently block the controversial execution of demise row inmate Robert Roberson this week was notable for the absence of Gov. Greg Abbott, political analysts say.
In a state the place the demise penalty is as ingrained as cowboy boots and conservative politics, information of Roberson’s demise sentence broke by means of in Texas after the rarest of phenoms: a loud, bipartisan effort that bypassed the governor’s workplace to save lots of a person from deadly injection.
For years, the appeals of Roberson’s capital homicide conviction for the 2002 demise of his chronically sick, 2-year-old daughter had lumbered by means of the courts, tracing a byzantine course of that usually fails to register with residents of the nation’s execution capital, the place 591 inmates have been put to demise within the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
However whereas lawmakers have been making historic interventions, many Texans took observe of the silence by the individual historically empowered to step in on the final minute: the state’s governor.
“Abbott’s silence is deafening,” stated Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science on the College of Houston.
In any case, Abbott had at his disposal the ability to grant a 30-day reprieve for Roberson, whose legal professionals declare was wrongfully convicted based mostly on junk science. A U.S. Supreme Court docket Justice urged him to take that step. If Abbott had, there would have been no frenzied try by lawmakers to problem a subpoena of Roberson after which go to courtroom to dam the execution — first to a Travis County decide, then to Texas’ two excessive courts earlier than Roberson’s execution was lastly known as off on Thursday.
There’s been no public assertion from Abbott about Roberson’s case earlier than or since. If the execution had gone ahead, Roberson would have been the primary individual within the nation to be put to demise in a shaken child syndrome case, a analysis that has come into query in recent times. A number of requests for remark to the governor’s workplace by The Texas Tribune went unanswered.
The silence “actually indicators his willingness to go his personal method towards the Legislature and in addition displays that, like Gov. Perry earlier than him, the conclusion that being powerful on crime is an important aspect of muscularity for nationwide Republicans,” Rottinghaus stated.
Silence on executions, commonplace
In contrast to the Hollywood picture of a governor making a frantic telephone name to cease an execution, the fact, particularly in Texas, is much much less dramatic. Texas governors can solely act on a advice of clemency from their very own appointees to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Or they’ll go for the 30-day reprieve.
Texas parole board has advisable clemency in a demise row solely a handful of occasions because the state resumed executions in 1982.
However regardless of that restricted energy, Abbott could have inadvertently raised the Texas public’s expectations of intervention final 12 months. That is when he was fast to leap in publicly after a jury convicted an Austin man of fatally capturing a Black Lives Matter protester. Abbott posted on social media that he would shortly search a pardon. The parole board did advocate a pardon a 12 months later, and Abbott made good on his promise.
However veteran courtroom watchers say Abbott’s silence on even a excessive profile demise penalty case just isn’t out of the extraordinary.
“It is typical,” stated Elsa Alcala, who served for seven years as a decide on the Texas Court docket of Legal Appeals, the state’s highest felony courtroom, earlier than stepping down in 2018. “Often, the governor would not become involved.”
Thus far, greater than 60 executions have been carried out whereas Abbott has been governor, a fraction of the greater than 200 that occurred when former Gov. Rick Perry was in workplace. That is the results of elevated judicial scrutiny on demise row circumstances and extra prosecutors searching for life in jail as an alternative of the demise penalty.
Abbott has solely commuted one demise sentence. In 2018, he spared the lifetime of Thomas “Bart” Whitaker, who masterminded a murder-for-hire scheme that resulted within the demise of his mom and youthful brother and injured his development firm government father, who in the end forgave his son. Whitaker’s case was diminished to a life sentence.
“Even going again to Ann Richards, I do not assume there is a historical past of Texas governors in capital circumstances giving reprieves,” stated Kenneth Williams, the Fred Grey Endowed Chair for Civil Rights and Constitutional Legislation at Texas Tech College. “They not often do in capital circumstances.”
Longtime Texas political observer Cal Jillson agreed.
“Governors no less than going again to George W. Bush, within the case of a mentally challenged inmate named Oliver Cruz, and Rick Perry, within the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, have been reluctant to intervene in demise penalty circumstances for concern of showing ‘comfortable on crime,'” stated Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist College.
The added undeniable fact that Abbott, earlier than he was first elected governor in 2014, was the state’s longest-serving lawyer basic, whose workplace is charged with guaranteeing a trial courtroom’s demise sentence is carried out, might assist clarify why Texans do not hear a lot from him concerning a person’s case.
“He defended these circumstances, so which will weigh on him as governor,” stated Williams, the Texas Tech College regulation professor, including that Abbott’s lack of intervention on this or some other case just isn’t out of step with governors in different states.
“Most governors are reluctant to grant any sort of clemency after there’s been conviction,” he stated. “I do not assume they need the blowback in that.”.
How the case unfolded
Roberson, 57, of Palestine, Texas, was convicted of his daughter’s demise in 2003 after an post-mortem decided his daughter, Nikki, who had been sick with a fever, had died of shaking and blows. Investigators believed that Roberson’s impassive demeanor was additional proof of his guilt. Roberson has since been identified as having autism, which might clarify Roberson’s conduct on the time. A police detective whose investigation despatched the East Texas man to demise row, now helps Roberson’s claims of innocence.
On Wednesday, as each the Texas parole board and the Texas Court docket of Legal Appeals rejected Roberson’s last-minute appeals, the Home committee members issued their subpoena, arguing that solely Roberson might present distinctive testimony on Texas’ pioneering 2013 junk science regulation — which Roberson had tried, and failed, to make use of to show his innocence. Final month, 80 Texas lawmakers, together with supporters of the demise penalty, wrote Texas parole board members in help of Roberson’s request for clemency.
The regulation is designed to permit defendants an avenue to show their innocence in the event that they have been convicted based mostly on science that’s later proven to be defective. In reality, no Texas demise row inmate has efficiently used the regulation to acquire a brand new trial, main the Texas Defender Service to conclude that the statute “just isn’t working because the Texas Legislature meant.”
The steps legislators took to halt the execution have been unprecedented, and drew some complaints of overstepping their authority.
“I’ll completely defend what we did,” stated state Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican from Midlothian, Texas, who started trying into Roberson’s circumstances a couple of months in the past on the advice of a colleague. “We now have to guard the integrity of the felony justice system.”
Harrison confirmed that lawmakers contacted Abbott after their subpoena was issued however didn’t wish to focus on specifics of these conversations, describing them solely as “skilled and productive.”
Lots of those that tracked the Roberson saga this week have been struck extra by the actions of the Legislature than the inaction of Abbott.
“What’s uncommon within the case of Robert Roberson just isn’t a lot Abbott’s silence, because the bipartisan effort to gradual this execution no less than lengthy sufficient to take a more in-depth look,” Jillson stated.
However Amanda Marzullo, the previous government director of the Texas Defender Service, stated it was essential for the Legislature to step in, on condition that using clemency by American governors has waned.
“We now have seen a large atrophy within the clemency energy,” she stated. “It was one thing governors did on a regular basis.”
She pointed to how greater than 200 years in the past, a governor’s pardon energy was used extra actually because demise was usually the punishment for much lesser crimes.
“That is how this technique was designed,” Marzullo stated. “So nobody department is doing all the work in a selected sector.”
This text initially appeared in The Texas Tribune. Learn the unique right here. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media group that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public coverage, politics, authorities and statewide points.
