SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Yesterday, the Texas State Supreme Court temporarily halted the execution of Robert Roberson after a bipartisan group of state lawmakers took extraordinary measures to prevent his death. His case caught their attention for a couple of reasons. Medical experts now believe his conviction was based on faulty and outdated science, and there is new evidence in the case as well. Roberson's is one of several death penalty cases to come under increased scrutiny this year, and here to connect the dots between them is Bryan Stevenson. He's the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Welcome.
BRYAN STEVENSON: Happy to be with you.
DETROW: I want to start with what just happened last night. What is your reaction to Roberson's case and the Texas Supreme Court's decision?
STEVENSON: Well, I think it's welcome, but it's also indicative of a very new era that we have entered. The courts that have historically been entrusted to make sure we don't execute innocent people did not intervene for Mr. Roberson in Texas, and I think that's what's really significant about the moment we're in. Five decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia by concluding that it just was too unreliable. A few years later, at the urging of many Southern states, the court reinstated the death penalty, but they made that reinstatement based on a commitment that death would be different, that there'd be heightened scrutiny. And, frankly, I think the last few years has indicated that the Supreme Court has now abandoned that commitment.
DETROW: Is this, to you, a clear U.S. Supreme Court problem then?
STEVENSON: I think the court is a major player in this. I mean, while you've always had state actors and others pushing for executions, the court has taken seriously this idea that there has to be reliability, there has to be consistency and fairness, and you can't experiment. And I think that is changing the legal environment in which these cases play out. I mean, the thing that's bizarre to me is that if Marcellus Williams in Missouri had been sentenced to life, if Mr. Roberson had been sentenced to life and the new evidence came forward the way it did in all of those cases, I don't think there's any question that all of them would have been granted new trials.
It's the presence of the death penalty that has so politicized these cases, that relief has become harder. And that's what's kind of creating this new sort of perverse meaning to death is different. There seems to be less willingness to correct clear errors even at the urging of prosecutors and law enforcement officers and state attorney generals. And that's a very new chapter in the death penalty story in America.
DETROW: Amid all of these dynamics, you do see one recurring theme and one recurring argument to move forward with these cases, and that is the idea of that is owed to the families of the victims of the crime. That's something that Missouri's governor, Mike Parson, said when it came to the Williams case. A quote from the order that removed the stay is "we could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim's family in limbo and solving nothing." Again, you hear this argument in case after case. What is your response to that general argument?
STEVENSON: I think we owe victims of crime more than the spectacle of an execution. I don't think any victim of a violent crime or their family wants to see an innocent person executed. It's significant to me that seven states have abolished the death penalty since 2011. No one is suggesting that victimization or violence is increasing in these jurisdictions because we're not killing people to show that killing is wrong. I think we should be doing more to help the victims of violent crime recover through counseling and support.
But these show executions, I think, really do very little to advance justice. And there are a lot of victims of violent crime who have stepped forward to argue that that's not what they want. I think we owe the entire society a system that is fair, reliable and just, and you can't do that if you're not willing to evaluate new evidence of innocence like we've seen in these cases.
DETROW: That was the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. Thanks so much.
STEVENSON: Very welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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