In the most recent development in a political dispute between the executive branch and a Texas House committee about death row inmate Robert Roberson’s case, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion Thursday evening to prevent Roberson from appearing at the Capitol on Friday.
The move requests that a district court in Polk County, the location of the death row jail, permit the state prison system to disregard a subpoena issued by a Texas House committee directing Roberson to testify in Austin.
The filing of the move “automatically excuses” the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from fulfilling the subpoena until the motion is heard and resolved, Paxton stated on social media.
The action is the most recent development in a heated dispute between Paxton and a bipartisan group of Texas senators who, believing that Roberson has been let down by the state legal system, have been trying for weeks to get Roberson to testify in person.
The attorney general’s office has been accused by Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, of slow-walking Roberson’s testimony and obstructing the committee until the panel’s automatic dissolution at the beginning of the next legislative session next month.
Paxton requested in the brief that a hearing be held before the court determines whether to grant his motion. He did, however, ask that the hearing not be scheduled before January 13, 2025, as he “will be out of the country.”
On January 14, the committee disbands and the new legislative session begins.
At a meeting with the Tribune on December 6, Leach stated, “The attorney general’s office is trying to delay until the start of the next session, which is just horrifying and maddening to me.”
After presenting the death row inmate with a second subpoena this week, members of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence had scheduled a hearing for Friday to hear from Roberson.
Paxton stated in his request that the committee’s subpoena was “procedurally deficient and overly burdensome,” requiring a court to shield the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from having to transport Roberson to Austin as required by the subpoena.
The subpoena, according to Paxton, was issued “in violation of the House rules, the Constitution, and the Open Meetings Act.” According to what he wrote, two-thirds of a standing committee must approve legislative subpoenas, and no legislator may continue to issue a subpoena on behalf of the entire committee.
Roberson’s scheduled execution was halted in October after the nine-member criminal jurisprudence committee unanimously accepted a subpoena to him. This sparked a legal and political battle between the executive branch and the legislature.
Paxton contended that the second subpoena was unlawful because the committee had not met again to approve it.
TDCJ was required to transport Roberson to the Capitol, which the motion stated “poses significant safety and security risks to the inmate, correctional staff, and the public.” The attorney general’s office further contended that the subpoena placed a “undue burden” on TDCJ.
According to Paxton, Roberson’s situation presented a particularly disproportionate problem for law enforcement, and his case has been “highly publicized.”
“To mitigate these risks even slightly, TDCJ would have to devote significantly more human and physical resources to the transportation of this one inmate, at a significantly higher cost than it otherwise would to transport an entire roster of inmates,” the motion states.
Additionally, Paxton charged that lawmakers had violated the separation of powers by issuing a subpoena that “exceeds any permissible scope” and had misrepresented their justification for requesting Roberson’s testimony.
Roberson has attempted in vain to utilize the state’s breakthrough junk science statute to reverse his conviction, but lawmakers have stated that they think the courts are not correctly applying it. In order to examine the law’s possible shortcomings, committee members stated that they would like to speak with Roberson, who has autism, personally about his attempts to pursue justice under the law.
Paxton, however, condemned that line of thinking as “nakedly pretextual,” contending that the committee’s “public statements leave little doubt that the true purpose of this invited testimony is to relitigate the question of Roberson’s guilt or innocence.”
Roberson’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween, claimed in a statement that the office of the attorney general was “relying on baseless and vague smears and cheap fear-mongering to justify an act seemingly without legal basis.”
She said that TDCJ officials had “made it clear to me personally that it would be no trouble at all to bring Robert to the Capitol” when Roberson’s execution was postponed in October. The OAG then stepped in.
“The real fear at play here seems to be that seeing and hearing from Robert will make it clear to the public that an innocent man sits on death row who is also a gentle soul with a pronounced disability,” Sween stated. “Texans deserve better.”
At the Tribune’s gathering on December 6, Moody and Leach pledged to keep up the fight for Roberson even as the next legislative session begins and in spite of the attorney general’s office’s objections.
“We will not relent in the pursuit of justice for Mr. Roberson,” Leach stated. “If they want to thumb their nose in the face of the Legislature that egregiously and blatantly, they can be and should be assured that a new committee next session … will issue a new subpoena if we have to.”
At https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/19/robert-roberson-ken-paxton-texas-house-testimony/, the Texas Tribune first published this article.
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