Capital Punishment and Pro-Life

October 18, 2024- Friday

There is a man in Texas whose name is Robert Roberson III.  Today he is on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas awaiting his execution.  He was scheduled to be put to death last night at 6:00 p.m.  The Pardons and Parole Board of Texas refused to stay his execution.  The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, refused to stay his execution.  The Supreme Court of the United States refused to stay his execution.  The Texas Supreme Court stepped in and stayed the execution of Robert Roberson.  Why did so many governmental leaders refuse to stay the execution of this man?

Robert Roberson, a man diagnosed at some point with autism, had been convicted of murder.  Allegedly, he had killed his two-year-old baby by shaking the baby to death.  The prosecution used the "shaken baby" phenomenon as the cause of death and the reason to kill Mr. Roberson. Evidence has since discovered there could have been a variety of reasons why the baby died, not shaken baby syndrome and not necessarily Robert Roberson's fault.  Why did so many leaders refused to hear new evidence and why were they content to see Roberson die?

Texas has a reputation of being a pro-capital punishment state and justifiably so.  Texas leads the nation in numbers of people put to death.  What we do not need is the reputation of being a dumb state where new information in science is ignored especially when a person's life is hanging in the balance.  To me, that is very hypocritical of those same leaders who are so opposed to abortion.  Before we legally put someone to death, we need indisputable evidence the person in question killed someone else.  We need to consistently err on the side of life, and we need to have witnessed or solid evidence before we terminate another person.  In our day and age, there is just too great a chance we can get this wrong and we need to be 100% sure we are right when it comes to applying the death penalty.