Governor Greg Abbott is furious with GOP state lawmakers and the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court as a consequence of unprecedented interference with the executive branch in the wild saga that revolves on death row inmate Robert Roberson's date with the executioner.
With Roberson set to testify virtually before a Texas House committee on Monday - four days after he was set to die for a crime that may have never occurred - Abbott is reportedly enraged and making threats of retribution against a cadre of representatives who subpoenaed the convicted killer to appear before them this week.
The governor's office asked the Supreme Court to block Robertson's testimony in a brief that it filed on Monday morning - arguing that a can of worms would be opened if the desperation bid to save him is successful.
Abbott general counsel James Sullivan contended that the House panel's actions were "out of line" and could lead to a rewrite of constitutional law governing executions.
But television personality Phil McGraw, a psychologist who's known as Dr. Phil, warned the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee at the hearing this afternoon that he was "100 percent convinced" that a "miscarriage of justice" will be committed if Roberson is put to death.
While Roberson's expected testimony postponed amid a flurry of legal moves and logistical differences, a juror at his capital murder trial testified that she would have voted to find the inmate not guilty based on what she knows today. But Terre Compton said the verdict was based solely on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome and that the jury never learned that the 2-year-old daughter who he was accused of killing had been severely ill with pneumonia and other ailments when she died.
The case took its latest turn on Sunday when GOP State Rep. Jeff Leach of Allen and Democratic State Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso filed a motion with the SCOTEX in response to Attorney General Ken Paxton's bid to have the subpoena dismissed. Moody is the chairman of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee that plans to hear from Roberson today at noon on Zoom. Leach, the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee chair, also is a member of Moody's committee.
Leach and Moody won a temporary reprieve for Roberson at the 11th-hour on Thursday when the state's highest civil court halted the execution on the grounds of questions that the novel case has raised on the separation of powers in Texas government. Abbott appeared poised to let Roberson die of lethal injection as scheduled after his appointees on the Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 6-0 to deny the inmate's appeal for a review of his plight after two dozen years on death row before the state put him down for good.
But Abbott said nothing publicly about new developments that have cast substantial doubt on the death of Roberson's daughter as an actual murder like it had been treated until now. Evidence that wasn't presented at his trial indicates that the young girl had been seriously ill with multiple maladies when she died. The governor didn't show any signs of concern that the state could be putting an innocent man to death - one of the most heinous crimes of all in a modern society.
Guilt or innocence appears to have been irrelevant in the eyes of the Republican governor in the Roberson saga. Abbott apparently is outrage because legislators who he thought he controlled stepped up to do what they believed to be right for the sake of justice in the absence of his intervention as the state leader who had the final call on executions up to now.
This isn't about justice, the sanctity of human life or right versus wrong in Abbott's mind. It's a territorial dispute - plain and simple - and the governor is highly-offended and angry because he thinks the legislative and judicial branches are treading on his turf as the leader of the executive arm of state government here.
Abbott rhetoric behind the scenes had conjured visions of the epic push this year to eliminate Republicans from the House roster by virtue of votes to kill his prized private school choice bill last year in special session. But Abbott may be blowing smoke at most this time around.
Leach is one of the most influential Republicans on GOP Speaker Dade Phelan's leadership team in the Legislature's lower chamber. Abbott campaigned for Leach before the March primary election when he faced a challenger who Paxton had recruited in a revenge tour that was sparked by the House's impeachment of him in 2023. Moody has been the highest-ranking Democrat in the House under Phelan.
But Abbott would find himself on the war path against two or more of the lower chamber's most conservative members if he seeks vengeance for upstaging him with the maneuvering on Roberson. GOP State Rep. Brian Harrison of Midlothian - as the prime example - made the motion in committee to subpoena Roberson. Republican State Rep. Nate Schatzline of Fort Worth voted for the motion along with the House panel's other eight members.
Harrison and Schatzline had both been associated with the far right.
Abbott could try to exact payback on Texas Supreme Court justices who signed a consenting opinion that put the brakes on the execution until Roberson had a chance to meet the subpoena's demands. But Abbott does not control the nine-member high court, which has only three judges who he appointed to it.
Two of the three Abbott appointees on the court added names to the opinion that stopped the execution last week. Justice Evan Young, who Abbott named to SCOTEX in 2021, wrote the opinion. Another Abbott appointee - Justice Rebeca Huddle - joined in the majority opinion. Huddle is on the general election ballot this fall. Young won't be up for a new term until 2026.
Chief Justice Nathan Hecht signed the opinion that saved Roberson as well. Hecht won't be running again as a result of age limits for Supreme Court members here.
“There are dramatic ways that we could enforce that subpoena,” Moody said today at the hearing that the star witness did not attend. "But we didn’t issue the subpoena to create a constitutional crisis, and we aren’t interested in escalating a division between branches of government.”
more to come ...
