UPDATE: On Thursday, October 17, a Travis County Judge approved a temporary restraining order that blocked Roberson’s scheduled 6 p.m. execution. The Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the judgment hours later, causing lawmakers to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the judge’s restraining order and stayed the execution.
This came after members of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena October 16 for Roberson to testify in a hearing on the use of the state’s so-called junk science writ in capital cases. The hearing was scheduled for October 21.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Roberson’s request for a stay of execution and writ of certiorari around 5 p.m. Thursday, less than an hour before his scheduled execution. In a statement, Justice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the high court’s inability to intervene, calling for Governor Greg Abbott to exercise his executive powers to grant clemency or a temporary reprieve. She wrote that this “could prevent a miscarriage of justice from occurring: executing a man who has raised credible evidence of actual innocence.”
