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Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion Thursday night to block death row inmate Robert Roberson from testifying at the Capitol on Friday in the latest escalation of a political battle between the executive branch and a Texas House committee over Roberson’s case.
The motion asks a district court in Polk County — where the prison that houses death row is located — to allow the state prison system to ignore a Texas House committee’s subpoena ordering Roberson to appear in Austin for testimony.
Paxton wrote on social media that the filing of the motion “automatically excuses” the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from complying with the subpoena pending a hearing and resolution of the motion.
The move is the latest in a tense standoff between Paxton and a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who have sought to obtain Roberson’s in-person testimony for weeks, convinced that the state legal system has failed him.
Reps. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and Jeff Leach, R-Plano, have accused the attorney general’s office of stonewalling the committee and slow-walking Roberson’s testimony until the panel automatically dissolves next month with the start of the new legislative session.
In the filing, Paxton asked the court to hold a hearing before it decides whether to grant his motion. But he requested that the hearing not be set before Jan. 13, 2025, saying he “will be out of the country.”
The new legislative session starts — and the committee disbands — on Jan. 14.
“The attorney general’s office knows that and is trying to delay until the start of the next session, which is just horrifying and maddening to me,” Leach said at an event with the Tribune on Dec. 6.
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Members of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence had planned to hear from Roberson at a hearing on Friday after serving the death row inmate with a second subpoena this week.
In his motion, Paxton argued that the committee’s subpoena was “procedurally deficient and overly burdensome,” making it necessary for a court to protect the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from complying with the subpoena’s demand that the agency transport Roberson to Austin.
Paxton argued that the subpoena was issued “in violation of the House rules, the Constitution and the Open Meetings Act.” He wrote that legislative subpoenas must be approved by two-thirds of a standing committee, and that no one legislator can retain the power to issue a subpoena on behalf of the entire committee.
The nine-member criminal jurisprudence committee had unanimously approved a subpoena to Roberson in October, which forced a stay of his scheduled execution and set off a legal and political fight between the lawm
