Oct. 19 (UPI) — A frantic and unprecedented rush by Texas lawmakers to successfully block the controversial execution of death row inmate Robert Roberson this week was notable for the absence of Gov. Greg Abbott , political analysts say.
In a state where the death penalty is as ingrained as cowboy boots and conservative politics, news of Roberson’s death sentence broke through in Texas after the rarest of phenoms: a noisy, bipartisan effort that bypassed the governor’s office to save a man from lethal injection.
For years, the appeals of Roberson’s capital murder conviction for the 2002 death of his chronically ill, 2-year-old daughter had lumbered through the courts, tracing a byzantine process that often fails to register with residents of the nation’s execution capital, where 591 inmates have been put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
But while lawmakers were making historic interventions, many Texans took note of the silence by the person traditionally empowered to step in at the last minute: the state’s governor…