The Texas state Supreme Court on Thursday halted the execution of Robert Roberson after back-and-forth rulings by lower courts nearly ended the pretty clearly innocent man over his extremely questionable 2003 murder conviction in the death of his daughter from the now-discredited “shaken baby syndrome” when the girl had tragically died of pneumonia, the Texas Tribune reports.
The last-minute reprieve came thanks to the intervention of Dem and Republican state lawmakers who had subpoenaed Robeson to testify to them and cops who had investigated the case and testified against him at trial. The Texas Supremes ordered a lower court to resolve the separation-of-powers issue, so the ordeal is still far from over and Robeson could still get the needle, but just the fact that the stay even happened is extraordinary and puts pressure on Governor Low Energy Greg Abbott to finally grab his balls and do something to make this right. Robeson shouldn’t just be commuted, he should be freed from prison after spending two decades in agony over this.
To fail to do so would end up delegitimizing the death penalty’s appropriate use for the fuckers whom truly deserve it, like Alabama psychopath Derrick Dearman, who slaughtered five members of his then-girlfriend’s family (six if you count an unborn baby) with an axe and a gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and was rightly executed for the crime via lethal injection Thursday evening.