LIVINGSTON, Texas — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Robert Leslie Roberson, III, who is currently housed on death row in the state’s Polunsky Unit. The court sent the case back to the East Texas Piney Woods trial court in Palestine to consider Roberson’s “new” or “junk” science claim. Roberson’s execution was set for October 16, 2025.
The Lone Star State’s highest criminal court ordered the trial court to address only this claim, doing so in light of its 2024 decision in Ex Parte Roark. The criminal appellate court remanded the Shaken Baby Syndrome case to the trial court to consider the defendant’s request for another look based on new scientific evidence unavailable at the time of his trial.
The high-profile case saw Dr. Phil McGraw testify before the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence in October 2024. Author John Grisham recently released a book, entitled Shaken – The Rush to Execute Robert Roberson, An Innocent Man. Grisham visited Roberson at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas. The prison is located just 43 miles from the execution chambers in Huntsville, Texas.
A bipartisan contingent of Texas state representatives visited Roberson at the death row unit in Livingston on October 8, as reported by KETK Fox 51. Conservative Republican Texas lawmakers, such as Brian Harrison, Jeff Leach, and Lacy Hull, have aggressively supported a thorough review, emphasizing that the pursuit of truth extends beyond political lines.
In October 2024, Representative Leach (R-Plano) and Representative Joe Moody (D-El Paso), the Chair of the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, took an unprecedented move by issuing a subpoena for Roberson to testify, which temporarily halted his execution.
Houston criminal defense and appellate attorney Carmen Roe told Breitbart Texas last October, “This is a clear message from the House committee that we are moving too fast, especially considering last week’s reversal of a similar shaken baby syndrome conviction from Texas’s highest criminal court.”
On Sunday, Breitbart Texas traveled to Onalaska, Texas, a cozy lake town located between Livingston and Huntsville, to visit the detective who testified at Roberson’s trial. Brian Wharton, who is now the pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Onalaska, emphasized that issues of judicial integrity, especially in death penalty cases, are not partisan matters.
Reverend Wharton explained, “We’re talking about the death penalty. This system has to have integrity, or it loses its legitimacy. We’re truth-telling, and if we’re going to tell the truth, we’ve got to tell the whole truth.”
“When you find your errors, you claim them,” the former detective stated. “We’ve got to talk about them.”
Wharton said the science surrounding Shaken Baby Syndrome has changed. “You can’t just ignore it.”
The pastor was the lead detective during the investigation. Breitbart asked Wharton what changed his mind about Roberson. “Integrity,” he stated.
He continued, explaining:
We thought we made a pretty good case, but the science changed, and so that highlights the error for all of us.
But that error opens up, you know, a number of other questions. If it wasn’t that, how much more of a case did we have?
We didn’t have the medical history. We didn’t because, you know, we didn’t have a clue to go look there. The medical examiner didn’t say anything, didn’t say it might be shaken baby or this, they just said shaken baby.
So that kind of tunnel-visions everything.
Pastor Whatron expressed his optimism about the case, stating, “We’re just kind of overjoyed that a court… has finally, actually, apparently, read some of the new evidence and decided, okay, we need to.”
Representative Leach urges, “There is no harm – absolutely none – that comes with pushing the pause button and granting Roberson a new trial. Doing so will not weaken our system of justice – it will strengthen it.”
Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She is a trial lawyer specializing in family law and criminal defense in East Texas. Previously, she served as a Texas prosecutor and family court associate judge in Harris County, Texas.
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