HOUSTON — HOUSTON (AP) — The Texas Supreme Criminal Court on Thursday again halted a death sentence Robert Robersonjust days before becoming the first person in the United States to be executed for a murder conviction related to a diagnosis of the disease. Shaken baby syndrome.
This was the third execution date Roberson’s lawyers have been able to postpone since 2016, including an attempt nearly a year ago. It has been stopped by Unprecedented intervention From a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who believe he is innocent.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the latest stay of execution. Roberson was scheduled to receive a lethal injection On October 16th.
Since the date of his first execution more than nine years ago, Roberson’s attorneys have filed multiple petitions to state and federal appellate courts, as well as to the U.S. Supreme Court, to try to stop his execution. Over the years, they have also asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to halt lethal injection, as part of their efforts to get a new trial for Roberson.
Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial said he beat and shook his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, violently, causing severe head trauma. They said she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome.
Roberson has long declared himself innocent, telling The Associated Press in an interview last week from death row in Livingston, Texas, that he never abused his daughter.
“I never shook her or hit her,” he said.
The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome refers to a serious brain injury that occurs when a baby’s head is injured through shaking or other violent impact, such as hitting a wall or being thrown to the ground.
His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse, but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and outdated scientific evidence.
In their latest appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Roberson’s lawyers have included what they say are new legal and scientific developments and expert analysis that show Nikki’s death was due to illness or accident and not abuse.
Roberson’s lawyers also included a joint statement from 10 independent pathologists who said the coroner’s autopsy report, which concluded that Nikki died of blunt force trauma to the head, was “unreliable.”
His lawyers also claimed that new evidence shows judicial misconduct in the Roberson case. They claim that the judge who presided over Roberson’s trial never revealed that he was the one who allowed Roberson’s parental rights to be circumvented and allowed Nikki’s grandparents to take her off life support.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, as well as some medical experts and other members of Nikki’s family, maintain that the girl died of child abuse and that Roberson had a history of beating his daughter.
In an editorial dated September 26 Dallas Morning NewsThree pediatricians, including two from Yale University School of Medicine, said they had reviewed the case and were “convinced that Nikki was a victim of child abuse.”
Shaken baby syndrome has come under scrutiny in recent years as some lawyers and medical experts have argued that the diagnosis has been made Sent incorrectly the people To prison. Public Prosecution and Medical associations I’d say it’s still valid.
Roberson’s supporters include both Liberal and ultra-conservative lawmakersTexas Republican Party mega donor and conservative activist Doug Deason, best-selling author John Grisham, and Brian Wharton, the former police informant who helped bring the case against him.
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