The course of Roger’s trial has been marred by a series of grave irregularities. Roger appealed the judgement and was given a second state- appointed attorney who did not contact him for well over four years. Finally, Roger was able to reach him by phone (until the year 2000, he was on death row at the Ellis One Unit of Huntsville, where the inmates were authorized to make two phone calls a year. This is no longer possible at the Allan Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where all male Texas death row inmates are now imprisoned). The lawyer informed Roger that he had decided not to take his case after all, because one of the police man on the case was a close friend of his. Roger asked him why he had needed four years to come to that conclusion…

When Roger entered the visitor’s room to meet his third state-appointed lawyer for the first time, the lawyer asked him point blank, without even greeting him first, “Why did you kill her?” (Referring to the bar owner who was shot). Roger told him politely that he did not need a lawyer who had already made up his mind about his supposed guilt, and he declined his services.

Thanks to a correspondent located in Switzerland, a group of friends in that country came together and gathered funds to hire a private attorney, Gary Taylor, who was then practicing law in Texas and who defended amongst others Odell Barnes, whose case was to become world famous and for whom even the pope intervened. In 1988, Gary Taylor presented a Writ of Habeas Corpus, the legal document demanding a new trial, to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) and to the District Court of Harris County, Texas (which is the sad record holder for death sentences in the USA).

In the summer of 2005, Gary Taylor left Texas, and another state-appointed lawyer replaced him, only to also leave the state in 2006. That same year, an international support group with members in six countries was formed to help Roger. Roger asked the group to hire a new private attorney, which happened in the fall of 2006. It is now Anthony Haughton, of Houston, on whose shoulders rests the challenging task of putting together a new defence, since the CCA rejected the Writ of Habeas Corpus submitted by Gary Taylor, claiming it had been filed too late.

Such is the nature of the Texas criminal justice system that makes it possible for inmates to spend up to thirty years on death row before being executed,-- surely one of the most cruel and unusual forms of punishment ever to exist in a civilized country. Roger was 23 years old when he was sentenced to death. He became 45 at the end of 2008.

After his first three years on death row, Roger got a first correspondent, from Europe, who visited him two years later for the first time. That was the very first visit Roger had received in five years. Two years later, he received a second visit, also from Europe, and a year later a third one, and since the end of the 1990s, he began to have more regular visits, about one each year, and then more often. After his book was published in 2003 (see The Book), the number of his correspondents increased exponentially. Little by little, this modest, self-taught hero of self-development and spirituality started on the long, slow climb which enables him today to be an inspiration to thousands of people throughout the world, a teacher and model for man y others.

“I believe in my heart that one day I will walk out of here. I have never thought otherwise” (Roger, in a letter dated June 6th, 2004).

For the latest developments in Roger’s case, see Latest News