Carolyn Hoyle writes on Texas death penalty case for Unherd

On 19 October 2024, DPRU Director Carolyn Hoyle published an opinion piece on the news website Unherd, discussing the case of Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson. Titled ‘Robert Roberson does not deserve the death penalty’, the article responded to recent developments in the case after Roberson received a temporary reprieve from the Texas Supreme Court just 90 minutes before his scheduled execution. 

Carolyn’s article addressed the fact that Roberson would be the first prisoner in the U.S. to be executed after a conviction based on the pseudo-medical concept of ‘shaken baby syndrome’. Since Roberson’s trial in 2003, there has been an enormous shift away from support for this concept in the field of forensic science, while new evidence in the case itself has also since come to light.  

As of the time of writing, the Texas Supreme Court has issued a further decision permitting the execution to proceed, subject to the scheduling of an execution date by a state court judge. Carolyn’s article on the Roberson case can be read on the Unherd website.