Things kept happening. On March 1, 2005, a year less a week after Crawford, the U.S. Supreme Court made another landmark decision when it ruled 5–4 that execution of offenders under eighteen years old at the time of the crime constituted cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The decision on Roper v. Simmons—written by Anthony Kennedy, joined by Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens and Breyer—stated, “When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity….”
Retribution, Kennedy declared, echoing the opinion of Jordan Steiker, was not proportional if the law’s most severe penalty was imposed on one whose culpability or blameworthiness was diminished to a substantial degree by reason of youth and immaturity. The decision also noted the need to consider “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of society” and, further, that since 1990 the United States stood alone in allowing the execution of juvenile offenders and that only one other country—Somalia—had not ratified Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which expressly prohibited the practice.
Roper canceled the death sentences of seventy-two inmates, including Robert Burns Springsteen IV. Once his sentence had been officially commuted by Governor Rick Perry, Springsteen was transferred from the death row section of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in East Texas to a maximum-security unit closer to Austin.
Three weeks later, the Third Court of Appeals upheld Mike Scott’s conviction, ruling that while his Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine witnesses had been violated, the error did not contribute to his conviction; therefore, admission of the redacted Springsteen testimony constituted “harmless” error.
Ariel Payan refiled the appeal, this time with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
On May 25, 2006, the TCCA reversed Robert Springsteen’s conviction and remanded the case to Travis County District Court 167 for possible retrial. The ruling, written by Judge Paul Womack, stated, “Based on U.S. Supreme Court case law decided after defendant’s trial, the admission [of Mike Scott’s statement] violated the Confrontation Clause. A statement taken by police officers in the course of interrogation was exactly the kind of testimonial statement prohibited under a Crawford analysis. The error was not harmless because there was no physical or forensic evidence connecting defendant to the crime, there was no witness that tied him to the crime, and defendant had repudiated his videotaped confession.” In conclusion, “introduction of Scott’s statement was…vital to the State’s case.”
Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote the dissenting opinion, in which she concluded that trial testimony revealed beyond a reasonable doubt that the admission of Scott’s written statement “did not contribute to the jury’s conclusion that Robert Springsteen murdered Amy Ayers.”
Mary Kay Sicola: “It’s been an exceptionally long wait to get a ruling. For all the reasons, for the sake of the integrity of our justice system, the sake of our community, I’m so happy the court has finally issued a ruling.”
John Jones: “Here we go again. This is going to be tough on the parents to have to live through all of this again.”
Ronnie Earle: “We are reviewing the opinion and the issues it presents.”
In a press release, the APD restated its belief in Springsteen’s guilt and vowed to work closely with the DA’s office to ensure that he “continues to be held accountable for these horrific murders.”
According to Bryan Case, prosecutors now had three choices: ask the court for a new hearing, appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or retry it in the same courtroom with the same judge.
In fact, there were two other options. Earle could offer Springsteen another deal and hope for better results this time. Or he could dismiss the charges and hope to try him again at a later date. But in order to get an indictment, they’d have to go before a new grand jury with a case that didn’t depend on Scott’s statement, and they didn’t have one.
Earle requested a TCCA rehearing, but when the court refused to review its decision he was down to retry, dismiss or deal.
Sensing a decisive shift in the weather, Springsteen’s attorneys were in no mood to accept any offer Ronnie Earle came up with, leaving him with only the dismiss or retry options.