It’s rare for governors to step in to halt executions. In the case of Robert Roberson, it ended up being state lawmakers who took extraordinary steps.
In a state where the death penalty is as ingrained as cowboy boots and conservative politics, news of Robert Roberson’s death sentence broke through in Texas after the rarest of phenoms: a noisy, bipartisan effort that bypassed the governor’s office to save a man from lethal injection.
There’s been no public statement from Abbott about Roberson’s case before or since. If the execution had gone forward, Roberson would have been the first person in the nation to be put to death in a, a diagnosis that has come into question in recent years. Multiple requests for comment to the governor’s office by The Texas Tribune went unanswered.
So far, more than 60 executions have been carried out while Abbott has been governor, a fraction of the more than 200 that occurred when former Gov. Rick Perry was in office. That’s the, who masterminded a murder-for-hire scheme that resulted in the death of his mother and younger brother and injured his construction company executive father, who ultimately forgave his son. Whitaker’s case was reduced to a life sentence.
“He defended these cases, so that may weigh on him as governor,” said Williams, the Texas Tech University law professor, adding that Abbott’s lack of intervention in this or any other case is not out of step with governors in other states. The law is designed to allow defendants an avenue to prove their innocence if they were convicted based on science that is later shown to be faulty. In fact, no Texas death row inmate has successfully used the law to obtain a new trial, leading the Texas Defender ServiceThe steps legislators took to halt the execution were unprecedented, and drew some complaints of overstepping their authority.
“What is unusual in the case of Robert Roberson is not so much Abbott’s silence, as the bipartisan effort to slow this execution at least long enough to take a closer look,” Jillson said.
Texas Politics Texas Policy Texas Government Criminal Justice Death Penalty Politics Texas Death Row State Government Greg Abbott
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