The execution of Robert Roberson in Texas stays on monitor for Thursday, regardless of critical doubts that he killed and even mistreated his 2-year-old daughter in 2002.
Prosecutors and medical specialists insisted at trial that the kid’s head trauma was proof that Roberson had bodily abused her. However now the detective who testified towards him says he believes Roberson is harmless, and a string of physicians argue that the “shaken child syndrome” prognosis that was commonplace medical doctrine on the time, and a key to Roberson’s conviction, is junk science and unreliable proof of abuse.
The idea is in such disrepute that the Texas Court docket of Felony Appeals on Oct. 9 overturned the conviction of one other man, Andrew Roark, 25 years after he was discovered to have injured his girlfriend’s youngster by extreme shaking. It’s unlikely a jury at this time would purchase the shaken child argument in Roark’s case, the court docket mentioned.
However Texas nonetheless plans to place Roberson to demise this week.
There may be no larger perversion of justice than executing an individual when there’s critical doubt that she or he dedicated against the law. Legal guidelines, courts, prosecutors, witnesses and juries are all a part of a system painstakingly crafted over centuries to ferret out the reality to ship justice. However as in Roberson’s case, the justice system typically appears extra involved with sustaining perception in its personal infallibility.
The case shouldn’t be a one-off. The identical day the Texas court docket threw out Roark’s conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court docket heard arguments within the case of Richard Glossip, who’s on demise row in Oklahoma regardless of critical doubts about his guilt. Everybody agrees that one other man, Justin Sneed, murdered Barry Van Treese in 1997 and agreed to testify towards Glossip to keep away from the demise penalty. The justices should contemplate whether or not prosecutors tainted the conviction by failing to reveal that Sneed was being handled for a critical psychiatric situation and lied about it.
Throughout the arguments, Justice Clarence Thomas repeatedly expressed concern that the try to probably reveal Glossip’s innocence and spare his life was undermining justice — as a result of exposing misconduct or error may impugn the integrity of the prosecutors.
If a thousand years from now future scientists have been to look at American civilization of the early twenty first century, as anthropologists at this time examine the Aztec empire and different societies that ritually killed, they may fairly theorize that executions have been a part of the liturgy of democratic elections.
It could be an affordable connection to make provided that within the months earlier than and after the 2020 presidential election, the federal authorities put 13 folks to demise from summer season by means of the election and after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol (which included a makeshift gallows maybe designated for the vice chairman) till simply earlier than the inauguration.
And the anthropologists would see one other spate of executions, this one from Republican states, within the weeks earlier than the 2024 election (though in reality executions proceed in some states at a gradual tempo).
Along with Roberson in Texas, Derrick Dearman is scheduled to die Thursday in Alabama, though his execution has drawn much less consideration as a result of there isn’t a critical proof of innocence. It’s merely one other state killing.
And on Nov. 1, 4 days earlier than the election, Richard Bernard Moore is scheduled to die in South Carolina (the identical state ended its 13-year execution hiatus a month in the past by killing Freddie Owens). Moore has till Friday to determine whether or not to die by deadly injection, execution or firing squad.
This can be very unlikely that the anthropologists will discover proof that the election season ritual killings protected us from no matter evil we feared. They might discover as a substitute that our cussed embrace of junk science comparable to shaken child syndrome to safe conviction and execution and the reluctance of courts to acknowledge error, poisoned our religion in our justice system and introduced it down.
They might discover a hyperlink between the cheapening of fact in prison justice issues and an analogous phenomenon in our elections, the place the precise outcomes are threatened by a candidate’s willingness to lie about them with a straight face.
It could be fascinating to understand how a future society will evaluate us with different nations that additionally ship false justice within the type of capital punishment. For instance, Japanese officers a number of weeks in the past admitted misconduct within the case of Iwao Hakamada, now 88, convicted of a quadruple homicide and sentenced to demise in 1968.
Proof towards him was faked, authorities lastly acknowledged, and he was acquitted final month. His life was stolen, his psychological well being destroyed. However no less than his exoneration got here whereas he was nonetheless alive.
Thank goodness, the anthropologists could say, that in addition to Japan and america, most different rich, law-observing, civilized nations of the time preserved liberty, public security and confidence in establishments of justice with out ever placing human beings, both responsible or harmless, to demise.
