A Texas man’s execution has been stayed. Now Ken Paxton wants to silence him.

On October 21, Robert Roberson he was scheduled to do what no death row inmate had ever done. He was scheduled to testify before a Texas Legislature committee investigating his case.

This would have been a remarkable moment in the history of the death penalty. It would have offered hope for Roberson himself. It would also have marked a time when the humanity of someone convicted of a capital crime was recognized by treating him as a credible witness in a public proceeding.

That explains why Texas officials, led by Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, they have intervened to prevent Roberson from testifying. Like Paxton said on Wednesday: “Several legislators have grossly interfered with the justice system, disregarding the separation of powers provided for in the state Constitution. They have created a constitutional crisis in the name of a man who beat his two-year-old daughter to death.”

Abbott, Paxton and their allies are determined to see Roberson executed and, in doing so, to silence his voice. They should not be allowed to get away with their plan.

They should obey the law and honor the subpoena as the Texas Supreme Court he did last week. The citizens of Texas, whatever their views on the death penalty, should demand that Roberson be allowed to tell his story to the state Legislature. Death row inmates, including Roberson, they sometimes gave interviews to journalists. But it is quite another when one of them is asked to lend his voice to an official analysis of a pressing public policy issue.

Even before this month’s events, Roberson’s case was already unprecedented in many ways. In 2002, Roberson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his daughter, Nikki. Crucial evidence against him was provided by an expert who testified that Nikki died from “shaken baby syndrome.”

If Roberson is executed he would be the first person in the United States euthanized based on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. But since Roberson was convicted, restless baby syndrome has fallen out of favor with many in the medical community. Doubts were raised about it by judges and legislators from several states.

Long before the Roberson case rose to public prominence, similar doubts were raised in Texas. In 2013, the state passed what is colloquially called a “junk science” law. According to the Associated Press say, the law “allows a person convicted of a crime to seek relief if the evidence against him is no longer credible.” And “at the time, it was hailed by the Legislature as a one-stop solution for the future for wrongful convictions based on flawed science.”

Texas, hardly a paradigm of criminal justice liberalism, BECOME the first state in the nation to pass such a law, which “clarified that judges could consider changes in the scientific value of evidence already available as a basis for granting post-conviction relief even after all direct appeals have been exhausted. “

However, courts have repeatedly refused to allow Roberson, who has maintained his innocence, to take advantage of this law through what his supporters word is “deliberate misinterpretation”.

Roberson, who was scheduled to be executed on October 17, was saved when a group of Texas lawmakers ingenious use of an ordinary legislative power: power to subpoena a witness to appear before legislative committees. It matches what I have appointed “a legislative adjournment”.

Having a death row inmate testify before a legislative committee would mark an abrupt break from a long history of such testimony not being considered credible. As Robert Popper, former New York State Attorney, wrote, “For at least three hundred years, between the 16th and 19th centuries, not even the defendant in a criminal case was allowed to testify on his own behalf.”

The same bar applied to people who had been convicted of a crime. The famous legal commentator William Blackstone put it this way“All witnesses, of whatever religion or country, who have the use of their reason, must be received and examined, except those who are infamous or interested in the case of the cause.”

In this country, prisoners and people sentenced to death were among such “infamous” persons. Throughout the 19th century, American courts made this clear.

In the 1871 case of Ruffin v Commonwealth, a Virginia judge put it succinctly: “He had as a consequence of his crime, not only his liberty, but all his personal rights, except those which the law in his humanity accords him. He is the slave of the state for now. He is civiliter mortuus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered as a dead man’s.”

The judge went on to explain, “The Bill of Rights is a statement of general principles for governing a society of free men, and not of convicted criminals and civilly dead men. Such men … are the slaves of the state punished for heinous crimes committed against the laws of the land.”

Courts no longer refer to prisoners or death row inmates as slaves of the state or civil dead. They can now testify in court. And in many capital cases, prisoners are often offered incentives to testify against co-defendants. But the prison guards is not an accident refers to a person awaiting execution like a “dead man walking”.

In Roberson’s case, his testimony before the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence would help parliamentarians to investigate whether state courts are properly following the “junk science” law. Rep. state Rep. Joe Moody, chairman of the committee, explicitly that the committee subpoenaed Roberson so he could “tell his story, what his life was like before this, what the investigation looked like through his lens. … (T)he legislature can use this information to make the decisions we need to make next in policymaking.”

Whatever its legislative purpose, Roberson’s appearance before the committee may also bring even more public attention to his case and prevent him from being executed. Whether it does or not, it’s a reminder that death row inmates are still human beings, entitled to be treated with dignity and have a voice in public proceedings.

This is exactly the kind of reminder that the most ardent supporters of capital punishment, like Abbott and Paxton, cannot accept.

Whatever the outcome of the effort to prevent Roberson from telling his story, legislatures in other states should follow what Texas lawmakers are trying to do and provide a place for death row inmates to testify when those legislatures take considering capital punishment bills. They and other Americans need to hear the voices of those we sentence to death, voices that are too often silenced until they are allowed to speak their last words.