It's Legal to Execute Innocent People in the US

October 17, 2024 6:50 PM

Robert Roberson Will be Executed Because It's Legal to Execute Innocent People in the U.S. Tonight, Texas was scheduled to execute Robert Roberson, who would have been (will be?) the first person executed based on the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis.

While at the time of this posting, it's unclear what will happen in Mr. Roberson's case, two things are clear: 1) individuals with strong claims of innocence continue to be executed in the United States; and 2) people are convicted of assaulting infants based on the controversial shaken baby syndrome theory in courtrooms across America.

posted by likeatoaster (39 comments total)

Disgusting. Appalling. Hard to comprehend.
posted by glaucon at 8:01 PM on October 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

Can we make a law that, IDK, the VICTIM'S IMMEDIATE FAMILY HAS A RIGHT TO GRANT CLEMENCY IN DEATH PENALTY CASES REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE STATE SAYS? Fuck the state. If the family is ready to not kill, then the state shouldn't. Like I generally oppose the death penalty, but at the very least, if the actual victims don't want to kill them, maybe that should be a right they have. Goddamn these murderous "pro-life" thugs. "Law" and "Respectabilty" and "Deterrence" and "The State Can't Make a Mistake, Even if it Does."
posted by symbioid at 8:09 PM on October 17, 2024 [21 favorites]

It's an extraordinary tell that people whose general philosophy is supposedly that the government shouldn't have too much power are a-okay with state-sanctioned murder.
posted by mollweide at 8:16 PM on October 17, 2024 [61 favorites]

One of the many bizarre things about the Roberson case is that earlier this month in a different shaken baby case, the CCA overturned the conviction on the grounds that shaken baby syndrome is junk science. I really thought they would halt Roberson's execution after that.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:17 PM on October 17, 2024 [10 favorites]

BREAKING: Texas Supreme Court issues a stay of execution for Robert Roberson. The execution will not proceed tonight.
posted by rodlymight at 8:33 PM on October 17, 2024 [32 favorites]

LawDork: Texas Supreme Court issues a stay of execution for Robert Roberson. The execution will not proceed tonight.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:33 PM on October 17, 2024 [9 favorites]

as long as it's legal to execute anyone, innocent people will get executed, because shit happens, mistakes get made, agendas get pushed. Get with the civilized world, USA.
posted by philip-random at 9:23 PM on October 17, 2024 [32 favorites]

So glad this was updated with tonight’s news!
posted by lepus at 9:45 PM on October 17, 2024 [4 favorites]

Absolutely articulate piece. I favorited so hard I almost broke my screen.

… it is legal in the United States to execute an innocent person. Indeed, the Supreme Court has twice ruled that it is perfectly constitutional to do so because the value of expediency and finality in the legal process is more important than truth, justice, and even human life.

From Scalia & Thomas’ 1993 concurring in the first link:

There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. In saying that such a right exists, the dissenters apply nothing but their personal opinion…. If the system that has been in place for 200 years… "shocks" the dissenters' consciences… perhaps they should doubt the calibration of their consciences, or, better still, the usefulness of "conscience shocking" as a legal test.

They also make the demonstrably false statement it’s unlikely to ever happen again that an innocent person gets the death penalty.

😳 I guess it is Due Process of the Law, not Due Process of Justice. We (the US) need a federal law to stop it from happening, judicial reform, ethics for SCOTUS, term limits, and to end Qualified Immunity (to end extrajudicial killings with impunity). And we (MeFi) need a tag “HardHittingTeenVogue”.
posted by rubatan at 12:30 AM on October 18, 2024 [12 favorites]

Punishing an innocent person is both immoral and an affront to justice. That is, it undermines faith in the justice system and is therefore corrosive to society. The only possible response is to have a way of putting things right when you have convicted an innocent person. The obvious reason to remove the death penalty is that you will inevitably convict someone who is innocent and you cannot raise the dead.

Civilised countries abolish the death penalty.
posted by plonkee at 4:14 AM on October 18, 2024 [10 favorites]

I guess it is Due Process of the Law, not Due Process of Justice.

But, it is that. Exactly that. The quoted bit from Scalia and Thomas is exactly what I'd expect them to say. Right down to the snarky bit about "shocking the conscience." Which I'd bet money on being Scalia's.

They are academic lawyers debating academic lawyer things. So, if they write these opinions-- which run the gamut from "arguing over the meaning of words" to "judge senpai fanfic fabricated from whole cloth"-- and it warps the fabric of reality for the little people? Not really their problem. Not in any way that's actionable.

The only way to get them to stop treating this like it's arguing over the right answers to questions on a law school exam and take it seriously is to buy one of them a motorhome. Some rando in Dallas getting the chair isn't something they're generally interested in.

Because their interests are focused elsewhere.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 4:59 AM on October 18, 2024 [10 favorites]

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by Texas based on what (in hindsight) was viewed as misinterpreted evidence and procedural meddling. The problems were widely documented and received national attention. Didn't stop the execution.
posted by adamrice at 5:36 AM on October 18, 2024 [11 favorites]

The desire for finality is hard to comprehend in this context, but I think the lead article does a great job of explaining how rooted it is in the entire justice system --- the courts are overburdened by the sheer numbers of people prosecuted every day as cop budgets continue to swell, so judges grow increasingly obsessed with docket control and efficiency. Walk into any criminal courtroom and this will become immediately clear. Each case is muddled through to get to the next one just so everyone involved in the daily process (court staff, judges, prosecutors, even sometimes defense attorneys) can get on with their day and get to adjudicating/judging the next human on the list.

If every case was thoughtfully investigated, tried, and considered, the entire system would grind to a halt. That is, after all, the point -- but it's also how we ended up with a system that refuses to second guess even death even with affirmative proof that the judge or jury made a fatal mistake.
posted by likeatoaster at 5:46 AM on October 18, 2024 [11 favorites]

Like I generally oppose the death penalty, but at the very least, if the actual victims don't want to kill them, maybe that should be a right they have.

The “actual victims” are not the family. Allowing the family of the actual victim to grant clemency seems like one of those solutions that is both simple, elegant, and wrong. For example, consider the death by violence of a wife with no other surviving relatives than her husband. Sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free sitch.

This does seem like a kafkaesque situation, only exacerbated by Justice Pubic Hair and company. Glad someone has taken at least preliminary steps to correct it.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:13 AM on October 18, 2024 [10 favorites]

When I was younger I wasn't exactly sure how to conceptualize "lawful evil" but this is exactly it, prioritizing systems above people and rules above justice. I'm against the death penalty anyway but this is sick and the system is sick; I'm obviously glad the execution was stayed but this is a nightmare.

I feel like we have a hollowed-out husk of a justice system. I don't know how well it used to work in practice and I don't want to romanticize anything but now it's just the shape and mechanisms of court cases mimicking a functional system. It's like justice dispensed by ChatGPT, form but no function just issuing plausibly-worded decisions based on...not reality and certainly not justice.

(Also thank you for posting likeatoaster, I always appreciate your perspective.)
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:19 AM on October 18, 2024 [12 favorites]

Can someone explain what the temporary stay of execution means? I mean "temporary" doesn't sound very comforting. Is it just temporarily temporary and will result in some sort of commuted sentence or eventually an exoneration? Or is this just going to happen in 30 days instead of last night?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:25 AM on October 18, 2024

It means "we're going to hold off while we have some kind of hearing that either actually looks at whether this is a miscarriage of justice, or [Texas] provides a fig leaf that we did that in order to execute this guy, who is clearly not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

I'm probably an outlier on this site in that I 100% support the death penalty and think we should use it way more often: corporate polluters, everyone involved in Project 2025... garden variety idiots who kill the gas station attendant during a robbery shouldn't be the primary subjects of the death penalty, and not only because a staggeringly high number of them turn out to be cognitively handicapped in some way and/or have traumatic brain injuries.

But it can't be enforced fairly: cops are shitty and stupid, juries are literally selected for stupidity, judges are selected based on how much they've bribed politicians, and as others have pointed out there are dozens and dozens of cases where the person was clearly innocent and got executed anyway. So fuck it, I'm against the death penalty.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:40 AM on October 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

There are some arguments in favor of capitol punishment that are not garbage, but they are not applicable to the United States, where We the People are not wise enough or good enough to be fair about things.

> When I was younger I wasn't exactly sure how to conceptualize "lawful evil" but this is exactly it, prioritizing systems above people and rules above justice

/thread
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:42 AM on October 18, 2024 [4 favorites]

> I'm probably an outlier on this site in that I 100% support the death penalty and think we should use it way more often:

I understand the appeal of the fantasy but this approach has been tried, and it does not work for reasons that are too long to fit into a blog comment.

The bumper-sticker phrase to keep in mind is "You cannot murder your way to goodness."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:44 AM on October 18, 2024 [10 favorites]

A nation, or a world, in which those in power may end the lives of others with no repercussions and in which people who suffer are forbidden from ending their own lives by choice is a nation, or a world, that has no right to exist in its present form.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:10 AM on October 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

I don't think we should execute this person because we should not have a death penalty, but it seems likely that he did in fact contribute to the death of this child through abuse. Let's commute it to a life sentence but this seems like more than "shaken baby" just based on a glance at wikipedia and the case text.
posted by ch1x0r at 8:49 AM on October 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

Robert Roberson did not kill Nikki by shaking her to death, and he should not be executed for it. Nobody should be executed, and the insistence of Texas on pushing this execution forward is indeed a manifestation of evil.

It is also important not to cast Roberson as some sort of angelic victim of circumstance who did no wrong. The women in his life said he was abusive, and I believe them. I have no doubt that he did shake Nikki - he admitted as much in the trial transcripts. He also admitted to slapping her. He was totally unfit to care for that child and, had she not been in his care, she would likely be alive today. It is horrifying that she died and he was partially responsible for the circumstances leading to her death.

The Innocence Project report and all of the news articles leave out a lot of information about the case.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:56 AM on October 18, 2024 [10 favorites]

There is no way to justify any death penalty. If killing someone is wrong, its wrong.

We are so good at warehousing human beings in this country, we would have no problem at all just tossing someone in jail forever...which also seems horrific and useless.

At least a lifetime in prison gives the possibility of the person changing or rehabilitating (even if we never let them out), whereas killing them does nothing for anyone.

Retribution feels like an idea that had its time and was found to not work. If someone is dangerous, I am ok with keeping them out of society, but we don't need to torture them while we do so. I would like to live in a society in which we treat killers with compassion even as we lock them away from the rest of us.

We should enshrine in law the morals and values we want the rest of society to live up to, not enshrine in law the worst we have to offer.
posted by stilgar at 9:00 AM on October 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

It's one thing to have innocent people occasionally executed because nothing is perfect.

It's quite another to have innocent people deliberately executed because the authorities impudently ignore truth.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:15 AM on October 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

No executions, its vile to execute innocent people, its vile to execute anyone. But I notice the white guy is getting a LOT more effort to save his life than Marcellus Williams did.

Mr. Williams was murdered let month in Missouri by the extra vile Andrew Bailey. Hmmmmm, I wonder what the difference between Mr. Williams and Mr. Robertons is? I guess it will remain a mystery.
posted by WatTylerJr at 9:27 AM on October 18, 2024 [7 favorites]

One of the side issues that always mystified me (much less important than the morality of executions) is WTF, if youre executing an innocent person (or even putting them in prison) then the person who did the actual underlying crime (assuming there was one) got away with it.
posted by WatTylerJr at 9:29 AM on October 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

the courts are overburdened by the sheer numbers of people prosecuted every day as cop budgets continue to swell, so judges grow increasingly obsessed with docket control and efficiency.

Let’s be absolutely clear here: the problem is also states that are willing to fund police but not public defenders, courts, and judges. They want the appearance of being “tough on crime”, but are unwilling to pay the actual costs for it.

If lawmakers were required to include proposed costs of laws, said costs to include the full costs of a full trial, not just a plea deal, I highly doubt they would get away with it.
posted by corb at 9:33 AM on October 18, 2024 [13 favorites]

I used to be in favor of the death penalty, in part because I grew up in Harris County in the time when Johnny Holmes was the DA and Houston was sending more people to the death chamber than most other states. I had a close encounter with a guy who ended up on Death Row about 30 years ago when he shot up a bunch of cars including mine in my apartment complex as part of a gun-stealing, shooting-up spree that terrorized my part of town for months and resulted in several deaths. That guy escaped from jail while on Death Row and was later recaptured, and after his execution they found a skeleton key in his mouth, which is pretty terrifying.

While I'm pretty sure that that one guy was guilty and would have been a continuing threat to society, I've watched the state of Texas long enough to be convinced that the death penalty shouldn't just be "safe, rare, and legal" but should be abolished altogether. Cases like Roberson's, where everybody except maybe Greg Abbott and his goon squad have figured out the conviction was a miscarriage of justice (like, when Jeff Leach is leading the Lege effort to save this guy, you know it has to have been a really bad case), have opened my eyes. I do not trust the state of Texas, and by extension, any state, to make a decision that can end a human life. If they'll do this to Roberson for bad science and the crime of being autistic, they'll do it to anybody. This is not right and it's not safe and I long for the day when we can change the laws and/or the US Constitution to ban the death penalty.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 12:13 PM on October 18, 2024 [4 favorites]

The Innocence Project report and all of the news articles leave out a lot of information about the case.

I definitely buy that “shaken baby syndrome” is not a sufficiently well-defined clinical entity to hang a murder case on, but beyond that it seems like there’s significant conflict between the way the medical facts were originally presented (multiple injuries clearly indicating abuse) and more recent evaluations from other experts (consistent with a fall plus injuries sustained during treatment for pneumonia, which now looks like the actual cause of death) and I really don’t know how I’d begin to evaluate the claims as a lay observer. That leaves me with more than enough doubt not to want a man to be put to death, but I do wish there were a little less elision of reasonable doubt - which again, should be plenty - and definite innocence.
posted by atoxyl at 1:32 PM on October 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Texan authorities don't care about guilt or innocence. They care that they have a group of people that they can kill, both for the pleasure of wielding life and death over somebody powerless to harm them or resist them, and as a show of force against the underclass, and they'll be damned if they'll let anybody take that away from them. Absolutely everything is downstream of that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:51 PM on October 18, 2024 [5 favorites]

If lawmakers were required to include proposed costs of laws, said costs to include the full costs of a full trial, not just a plea deal, I highly doubt they would get away with it.

Great minds think alike! It's been my opinion for a while now that the third branch of our government should be at least as big as the executive since all of it's activity either comes from executive branch operating as normal and the rest is all the civil suits that ultimately depend on executive branch power to enforce it's decisions.

It's ridiculous that an innocent person can be financially ruined just to prove their innocence.
posted by VTX at 3:27 PM on October 18, 2024 [4 favorites]

A man was recently executed in Missouri even after prosecutors tried to stop the execution due to problems in the original conviction. The governor pardoned the McCloskys, the white couple that pointed loaded guns at BLM protestors. You probably don't have to be familiar with the case to guess that the executed man was Black.

I saw a lot of arguments in favor of the execution that boiled down to "but even if they didn't prove this crime, he wasn't a good man. If he didn't do it, he was the type of man who would do it."

When I was a kid, I was pretty naive and believed that most people were good at heart. I thought science fiction stories where the government decided you were a bad person and threw you in jail or executed you without convicting you of a crime were far-fetched. They were thought experiments, examples of why we don't think this way - a philosophical parallel to stories about Germany winning WWII, exploring something that is clearly counter-factual. I didn't think that they were actually addressing beliefs that people actually held.

Boy was I wrong.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:16 AM on October 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

the pleasure of wielding life and death over somebody powerless

Again, for those of you in the back: the cruelty is the point.
posted by neuron at 10:10 AM on October 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

Some time ago, I read an article claiming that 30% of people in prison were not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted. In that essay, DNA evidence proved the law had erred. The state (involved) released those prisoners. By that metric, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seems to be a relatively low bar. I am not in favor of state-sponsored executions on those grounds.

By that metric, I also find the astronomical number of people in our prisons to be more than a little unsettling. I lend that discomfort to the effects of capitalization on the privatization of the prison system, another argument in the same vein as this discussion.

However, I believe killing a human being can be justified, for example, when defending oneself. I also think that police officers have the right--in some cases, the duty--to take a life to save a life—Ditto for members of our armed forces. (Please, let's not go into jus ad bellum / jus in bello territory.) So, yes, I value some lives over others, but this is a situational view, not a general one.

Murder is a legal term that applies to a killing not sanctioned by law. I believe an illegal killing at the state level deserves another name, one informing us that we tread in dark waters. The word "murder" seems insufficient.
posted by mule98J at 12:42 PM on October 19, 2024

I do wish there were a little less elision of reasonable doubt - which again, should be plenty - and definite innocence

I wish we had the Scottish "Not Proven" - I think it would give juries who were uncomfortable with "Not Guilty" but thought the state hadn't shown their case a little more confidence.

I also think that the "trial penalty" should be absolutely, 1000% fucking illegal. You see, how it works is, if you request a trial, the prosecutor gets to ask for a higher sentence, because you made him go to trial, and the judge gets to decide that you haven't demonstrated adequate "remorse", because you requested your fucking right to a trial, and that's a sentencing enhancement. And really, they're all just mad that the defendant made them do their fucking job. You know, the one they are constitutionally required to provide.
posted by corb at 6:58 AM on October 21, 2024 [4 favorites]

Some time ago, I read an article claiming that 30% of people in prison were not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted.

I don't know whether that statistic is exactly accurate, but it's at least partially an artefact of the plea deal approach, compounded by having sentencing guidelines that are too broad and do not consider totality. Even if you are not guilty it is often better to take a plea deal for a lighter sentence and a lesser crime, than risk a de facto life sentence if it goes to trial.

There are reasons to incentivise guilty people to plead guilty at the earliest opportunity, but you can do that without making any trial penalty so astoundingly awful.
posted by plonkee at 7:08 AM on October 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

But I notice the white guy is getting a LOT more effort to save his life than Marcellus Williams did.

I also noticed there was no FPP for Marcellus Williams during that week in September. I'm not that surprised though.
posted by numaner at 2:33 PM on October 23, 2024 [2 favorites]

Even if you are not guilty it is often better to take a plea deal for a lighter sentence and a lesser crime, than risk a de facto life sentence if it goes to trial.

Moreover, my understanding is that once you plea, you're basically at the mercy of your probation officer. Your sentence is "deferred," but you're already guilty. That's how you plead. So, if you violate the terms of your probation (in the eyes of your probation officer) you're going to prison. Because otherwise you would have lost your job, family, who knows what else while you are caged for months or years on end.

All because a single cop at a point in time had the power to cage.

(There may be other administrative checks so that a probation officer doesn't go rogue in a vacuum, but in my experience your right to a trial is over, and you will now only have cops to plead your case to.)
posted by CPAnarchist at 2:42 PM on October 23, 2024 [5 favorites]

Dallas Morning News: Ken Paxton releases records to ‘correct falsehoods’ about Robert Roberson case (archive link) "Texas AG says Roberson had history of abuse, was not convicted on ‘shaken baby’ theory." (read carefully as one of the allegations involves the sexual abuse of the infant!)

Context for those not in Texas: The Texas House, whose members pulled the stunt with the subpoena that saved Roberson from his recent execution date, is more liberal less radically reactionary than Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott (AG and Governor). More importantly in Paxton's case, the House impeached Paxton over his shady doings though unfortunately the Senate failed to convict on a not-quite-party-line vote. Jeff Leach, the Republican representative on the House Committee of Criminal Jurisprudence who has been a leader in trying to get the Roberson conviction vacated, is on Paxton's shit list over his role in the impeachment. So some of this is personal grudge-baiting and dominance.

Also note that while I think in this case Leach is 100% doing the right thing and I'm really glad he did it, part of the political picture here is that the Legislature passed a junk-science bill to get these bad convictions vacated back in 2013 that should have applied to the Roberson case. So the AG and the pardons & parole folks and the whole court system are thumbing their nose at the law in this case, and part of what the statement is designed to do is impress on the undecided folks that the junk-science law shouldn't apply because the conviction relies on other allegations.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:18 PM on October 23, 2024 [3 favorites]