TV daytime host Phillip McCraw testifies in front of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence on Monday. Credit: Screenshot / Texas House of Representatives

AUSTIN – Phillip McGraw, the TV host known as “Dr. Phil,” told Texas’ House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence that the state’s pending execution of Robert Roberson would be a miscarriage of justice.

“After examining the record in this case, the trial transcript in this case, the medical records in this case, this man has not had due process,” said McGraw, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology. “This man has not had a fair trial, and if we start executing people in Texas, absent due process, absent fair trial, we are going down a really dangerous road that is not something I can support.”

The daytime TV host was the first witness to give testimony in front of the committee’s hearing on the Roberson case, which also drew celebrity advocates including author John Grisham.

A jury found Roberson — who’s since been diagnosed with autism — guilty in 2003 of shaking his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, to death. During the trial, experts maintained that Nikki was the victim of shaken baby syndrome.

However, much of the science around shaken baby syndrome has since been discredited — something McGraw pointed out during his detail-oriented, 26-minute-long analysis of the trial.

“We now know from an evolution of science that that’s just simply not the case,” said McGraw, who’s spent hours interviewing Roberson. “There are a number of other explanations for those symptoms, and that causation has actually been debunked.”

Roberson was due to be executed by the state last Thursday. However, the execution was stopped just hours before after the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify in person.

The committee subpoenaed Roberson to testify in person, granting what amounted to a last minute delay of his execution. However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stood in the way, ruling that Roberson would only testify via video.

Roberson didn’t testify Monday as many had hoped. Committee Chair Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso, said it wouldn’t have been fair to allow Roberson to testify via video call.

“I believe that that’d be perfectly reasonable for most inmate witnesses,” Moody said. “But Robert is a person with autism who has significant communication challenges, which was a core issue that impacted him at every stage of our justice system.”

Roberson wasn’t diagnosed with autism until 2018. Due to new scientific revelations about shaken baby syndrome and the inmate’s diagnosis, advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are demanding that he be allowed to testify before the committee.

Even so, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott argued the subpoena issued by the House committee, which essentially put a temporary stay on Roberson’s execution, violates the Texas Constitution.

“Unless the court rejects that tactic, it can be repeated in every capital case, effectively rewriting the [Texas] Constitution to reassign a power only given to the Governor,” the Republican governor said in a statement.

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