Robert Roberson Faces New Execution Date in Controversial ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ Case

Attorneys for Robert Roberson and for the State of Texas went toe-to-toe in a Palestine courtroom Wednesday arguing over the fate of the man whose execution date was halted in a dramatic eleventh-hour intervention by state legislators and whose appeals have raised the question of whether a crime occurred at all After hearing arguments Smith County Judge Austin Reeve Jackson who is new to the incident and is described in campaign literature as a grassroots conservative ruled that there was no legal reason not to sign the execution order which sets a date of October almost exactly a year after Roberson s last scheduled date He noted that the Court of Criminal Appeals has had the matter pending for five months and hasn t ruled It doesn t seem like anything is going to get resolved without a date Jackson stated at the close of the hearing calling it unfortunate Roberson attended the hearing wearing jail-issued black and white stripes and a bullet-proof vest As he was escorted out after the judge s ruling someone commented We love you Robert Otherwise the courtroom was quiet Robert Roberson in family pictures including his daughter Courtesy Roberson Family Innocence Project Gretchen Sween The hearing had been scheduled after Attorney General Ken Paxton s office took over the situation from Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell and swiftly called for a new execution date for Roberson In court Roberson s attorney Gretchen Sween objected to resetting a date noting that an appeal is still making its way through Texas courts arguing his actual innocence This was the crux of the argument she made Wednesday calling it atypical for the state to seek an execution date while an appeal was pending Roberson was convicted in of causing the death of his young daughter Nikki Curtis who died in of what physiological professionals at the time deemed to be Shaken Baby Syndrome SBS based on a now-discredited diagnostic method Several experts tapped by the defense have helped uncover another possibility that Nikki died of a constellation of natural causes including double pneumonia and sepsis There s no legal or practical or moral reason to be setting a date at this time Sween recounted the Observer in an interview earlier this week Roberson had only in recent weeks gotten custody of his two-year-old daughter Nikki in January when he rushed her to the Palestine Regional Crisis Room She had been sick for a week with characteristics including diarrhea vomiting and a fever of up to degrees and that morning Roberson had awoken to find she had fallen out of the bed they were sharing After he checked her for injuries they went back to sleep Four hours later when Roberson awoke to his alarm Nikki was unresponsive A CT scan at the hospital revealed bleeding and brain swelling but Nikki didn t have any skull fractures to explain her injuries She was transferred to Dallas Children s Healthcare Center where a pediatrician who specialized in child abuse recognized what was maintained to be a tell-tale set of clues For decades the scientific consensus stated that if children had subdural bleeding brain swelling and retinal hemorrhages all of which Nikki had doctors could presume they were casualties of SBS In contemporary times the consensus has shifted and doctors only diagnose what is now called Abusive Head Trauma if all other possibilities like short falls accidents or illness have been excluded and doctors have reviewed the child s diagnostic records In Nikki s affair the diagnostic examiner who performed her autopsy didn t look at her curative records which presented a two-year-old with a history of infections and breathing problems After Nikki was taken off life advocacy without her father s consent police arrested Roberson He was charged and convicted of capital murder An Anderson County jury sentenced him to death But in appeals since the majority latest filed in February his lawyers have presented new testimony from experts that clarify how dire Nikki s strength was before she died and how the short fall off of the bed could have led to the head injuries doctors saw that day at the ER Even the original lead police investigator on the incident has reversed his opinion and now says he believes Nikki s death was accidental Since challenges to SBS diagnoses have resulted in the exonerations of people across the United States according to the National Registry of Exonerations If executed Roberson would be the first in the country put to death based on the controversial diagnostic method Last fall Roberson earned a groundswell of bipartisan help from legislators who either thought he was innocent or that the state s laws related to changing scientific consensus failed him We as a legislature authentically created a way for people like Mr Roberson to challenge convictions based on science that later turns out to be wrong disclosed Democratic state Representative Joe Moody at a press conference last September when attention around Roberson s development was growing As far as we can tell though the courts totally aren t engaging in that process So convictions are being allowed to stand on junk science The Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify in a hearing on October four days after he was set to be executed by lethal injection What followed was a fiery debate about the separation of powers among the state s authorities In any incident the subpoena helped stop the clock The state Supreme Court halted the execution the night it was supposed to take place Paxton s office responded with a constituents declaration to set the record straight on the facts of the scenario The declaration attacked legislators by name and repeated a flawed argument that prosecutors made in appeals that Roberson hadn t veritably been convicted based on SBS in the first place This is despite the fact that SBS was mentioned numerous times during his trial including in the testimony of the child abuse expert who originally suggested that Nikki exhibited the signs I m very alarmed by several of the misinformation about the circumstance that has been intentionally peddled in certain circles and I think it s emanating from elected functionaries It has to do with politics which should have no place in this Sween narrated the Observer During the latest legislative session lawmakers in the House of Representatives attempted to push forward reforms to the state s junk science law which is meant to give people another avenue to contest their convictions based on newly discredited forensic methods After receiving overwhelming aid in the House the regulation failed in the Senate Legislators have argued that Roberson was denied the chance to use that existing process in his event The post Robert Roberson Faces New Execution Date in Controversial Shaken Baby Syndrome Occurrence appeared first on The Texas Observer