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DALLAS (AP) — Texas has sued a Dallas doctor over accusations of providing gender-affirming care to youths, marking one of the first times a state has sought to enforce recent bans driven by Republicans.

The lawsuit announced by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday alleges that Dr. May Lau, a physician in the Dallas area, provided hormones to over 20 minors in violation of a Texas ban that took effect last year.

It is the first time Texas has tried to enforce the law, said Harper Seldin, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. He also said he was not aware of other states that have tried to enforce similar bans.

“Today, enforcement begins against those who have violated the law,” Paxton’s office said in the lawsuit, which was filed in suburban Collin County.

The Texas law prevents transgender people under 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries, though surgical procedures are rarely performed on children.

Seldin said that while he couldn’t comment on the facts of this case, he said the lawsuit is the “predictable and terrifying result” of the law, which his organization tried to prevent by challenging it.

“Doctors should not have to fear being targeted by the government when using their best medical judgment and politicians like Ken Paxton should not be putting themselves between families and their doctors,” Seldin said.

Lau is an associate professor in the pediatrics department at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, according to the UT Southwestern website. The lawsuit said she has hospital privileges at two area Children’s Health hospitals.

The lawsuit accuses her of “falsifying medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to represent that her testosterone prescriptions are for something other than transitioning a child’s biological sex or affirming a child’s belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex.”

Paxton is asking the court for an injunction against Lau and for her to be fined as much as $10,000 per violation.

Lau nor UT Southwestern immediately replied to requests for comment on Thursday. Children’s Health said in a statement that it “follows and adheres to all state health care laws.”

At least 26 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and most of those states face lawsuits. Federal judges have struck down the bans in Arkansas and Florida as unconstitutional, though a federal appeals court has stayed the Florida ruling. A judge’s orders are in place to temporarily block enforcement of the ban in Montana. New Hampshire restrictions are to take effect in January.

The lawsuit comes just weeks before an election in which Republicans have used support of gender-affirming health care as a way to attack their opponents. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has repeatedly blasted his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, for his support of transgender rights.

The Texas ban was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who was the first governor to order the investigation of families of transgender minors who receive gender-affirming care.

HUNTSVILLE (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.

In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson had been confined to a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.

“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution. “He praised God and he thanked his supporters. And that’s pretty much what he had to say.”

She said Roberson would be returned to the Polunsky Unit, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the east, where the state’s male death row is located.

Roberson, 57, was convicted of killing of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.

Order capped a night of last-minute maneuvers
It is rare for the Texas Supreme Court — the state’s highest civil court — to get involved in a criminal matter.

But how the all-Republican court wound up stopping Roberson’s execution in the final hours underlined the extraordinary maneuvers used by a bipartisan coalition of state House lawmakers who have come to his defense.

Rejected by courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators on Wednesday tried a different route: issuing a subpoena for Roberson to testify before a House committee next week, which would be days after he was scheduled to die. The unusual plan to buy time, some of them conceded, had never been tried before.

They argued that executing Roberson before he could offer subpoenaed testimony would violate the Legislature’s constitutional authority. Less than two hours before Roberson’s execution, a judge in Austin sided with lawmakers and paused the execution, but that was then reversed by an appeals panel. The Texas Supreme Court then weighed in with its order, ending a night of uncertainty.

Roberson is scheduled to testify before the committee Monday.

“This is an innocent man. And there’s too much shadow of a doubt in this case,” said Democratic state Rep. John Bucy. “I agree this is a unique decision today. We know this is not a done deal. He has a unique experience to tell and we need to hear that testimony in committee on Monday.”
Governor and US Supreme Court did not move to halt execution

Gov. Greg Abbott had authority to delay Roberson’s punishment for 30 days. Abbott has halted only one imminent execution in nearly a decade as governor and has not spoken publicly about the case.

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the execution, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor — in a 10-page statement about the case — urged Abbott to grant a 30-day delay.

Roberson’s lawyers had waited to see if Abbott would grant Roberson the one-time reprieve. It would have been the only action Abbott could take in the case as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday denied Roberson’s clemency petition.

The board voted unanimously, 6-0, to not recommend that Roberson’s death sentence be commuted to life in prison or that his execution be delayed. All board members are appointed by the governor. The parole board has recommended clemency in a death row case only six times since the state resumed executions in 1982.

The one time Abbott halted an imminent execution was when he spared the life of Thomas Whitaker in 2018.
Lawmakers invoke Texas’ law on scientific evidence

The House committee on Wednesday held an all-day meeting on Roberson’s case. In a surprise move at the end of the hearing, the committee issued the subpoena for Roberson to testify next week.

During its meeting in Austin, the committee heard testimony about Roberson’s case and whether a 2013 law created to allow people in prison to challenge their convictions based on new scientific evidence was ignored in Roberson’s case.

Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, whose office prosecuted Roberson, told the committee a court hearing was held in 2022 in which Roberson’s attorneys presented their new evidence to a judge, who rejected their claims.

“Based on the totality of the evidence, a murder took place here. Mr. Roberson took the life of his almost 3-year-old daughter,” Mitchell said.

Most of the members of the House committee are part of a bipartisan group of more than 80 state lawmakers, including at least 30 Republicans, who had asked the parole board and Abbott to stop the execution.

Case puts spotlight on shaken baby syndrome
Roberson’s case has renewed debate over shaken baby syndrome, known in the medical community as abusive head trauma.

His lawyers as well as the Texas lawmakers, medical experts and others including bestselling author John Grisham say his conviction was based on faulty and now outdated scientific evidence. The diagnosis refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s supporters don’t deny head and other injuries from child abuse are real. But they say doctors misdiagnosed Curtis’ injuries as being related to shaken baby syndrome and that new evidence has shown the girl died from complications related to severe pneumonia.

Roberson’s attorneys say his daughter had fallen out of bed in Roberson’s home after being seriously ill for a week.

Roberson’s lawyers also suggested his autism, then undiagnosed at the time of his daughter’s death, was used against him as authorities became suspicious of him because of his lack of emotion over her death. Autism affects how people communicate and interact with others.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The biggest source of new residents to Florida and Texas, the two U.S. states with the largest number of new residents last year, was other countries.

A little over 45% of the almost 634,000 residents in Florida who said that they had lived in a different state or abroad the previous year came from a foreign country, according to migration data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Florida, with 23 million residents, had more people who said they had lived in a different place the previous year than any other state, though Texas wasn’t far behind. Of the almost 612,000 Texas residents who had lived elsewhere in the previous year, 43% were from another country. Texas has 30.5 million residents.

The migration figures don’t show from which countries the new residents arrived.

Priscila Coronado moved last year to Miami from Guatemala, looking for a better future.

“I am happy. My dream is to study, learn English and graduate with a nursing degree,” Coronado said. “There is no crime here, and that is an achievement.”

Among U.S. states, New York was the top producer of new Floridians, and more recently minted Texans had lived in California the year before than any other state.

But Florida and Texas didn’t just gain residents; some also moved out. Georgia gained the most former Floridians last year, and California had the most ex-Texans.

DALLAS (AP) — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Colin Allred met for their only debate Tuesday night, trading attacks over abortion and immigration in a closely watched race that could help determine which party wins control of the U.S. Senate.

Nationally, Democrats view Texas as one of their few potential pickup chances in the Senate this year, while Cruz has urged Republicans to take Texas seriously amid signs that the former 2016 presidential contender is in another competitive race to keep his seat.

From start to finish in the hourlong debate, Cruz sought to link Allred to Vice President Kamala Harris at nearly every opportunity and painted the three-term Dallas congressman as out of step in a state where voters have not elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 30 years.

Allred, who would become Texas’ first Black senator if elected, hammered Cruz over the state’s abortion ban that is one of the most restrictive in the nation and does not allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest. The issue is central to Allred’s underdog campaign and his supporters include Texas women who had serious pregnancy complications after the state’s ban took effect.

Pressed on whether he supports Texas’ law, Cruz said the specifics of abortion law have been and should be decided by the Texas Legislature.

“I don’t serve in the state Legislature. I’m not the governor,” he said.

Cruz later blasted Allred over his support of transgender rights and immigration polices of President Joe Biden and Harris, accusing him of shifting his views on border security from the positions he took when he was first elected to Congress in 2018.

“What I always said is that we have to make sure that as we’re talking about border security, that we don’t fall into demonizing,” Allred said.

Allred accused the two-term U.S. senator of mischaracterizing his record and repeatedly jabbed Cruz for his family vacation to Mexico during a deadly winter storm in 2021 that crippled the state’s power grid.

The two candidates closed the debate by attacking each other, with Cruz painting an Allred victory as a threat to Republicans’ grip on Texas.

“Congressman Allred and Kamala Harris are both running on the same radical agenda,” Cruz said.

Allred, meanwhile, cast himself as a moderate and accused Cruz of engaging in what he described as “anger-tainment, where you just leave people upset and you podcast about it and you write a book about it and you make some money on it, but you’re not actually there when people need you.”

The last time Cruz was on the ballot in 2018, he only narrowly won reelection over challenger Beto O’Rourke.

The debate offered Allred, a former NFL linebacker, a chance to boost his name identification to a broad Texas audience. Allred has made protecting abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign and has been sharply critical of the state’s abortion ban. The issue has been a winning one for Democrats, even in red states like Kentucky and Kansas, ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to strip away constitutional protections for abortion.

Cruz, who fast made a name for himself in the Senate as an uncompromising conservative, has refashioned his campaign to focus on his legislative record.

Allred has meanwhile sought to flash moderate credentials and has the endorsement of former Republican U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

The two candidates alone have raised close to $100 million, according to the most recent reports from the Federal Election Commission. Tens of millions more dollars have been spent by outside groups, making it one of the most expensive races in the country.

Despite Texas’ reputation as a deep-red state and the Democrats’ 30-year statewide drought, the party has grown increasingly optimistic in recent years that they can win here.

Since former President Barack Obama lost Texas by more than 15 percentage points in 2012, the margins have steadily declined. Former President Donald Trump won by 9 percentage points in 2016, and four years later, won by less than 6. That was the narrowest victory for a Republican presidential candidate in Texas since 1996.

“Texas is a red state,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “But it’s not a ruby-red state.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man who could be the first person in the U.S. executed for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome is facing a lethal injection Thursday evening amid assertions by his attorneys and a diverse coalition of supporters who say he’s innocent and was convicted on faulty scientific evidence.

Robert Roberson waited to hear whether his execution might be stopped by either Gov. Greg Abbott or the U.S. Supreme Court — his last two avenues for a stay. He is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Roberson, 57, was condemned for the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. Roberson has long proclaimed his innocence, backed by some notable Republican lawmakers and the lead detective on the case.

“He’s an innocent man and we’re very close to killing him for something he did not do,” said Brian Wharton, the lead detective with Palestine police who investigated Curtis’ death.

Roberson’s lawyers waited to see if Abbott would grant Roberson a one-time 30-day reprieve. It’s the only action Abbott can take in the case as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday denied Roberson’s clemency petition.

The board voted unanimously, 6-0, to not recommend that Roberson’s death sentence be commuted to life in prison or that his execution be delayed. All members of the board are appointed by the governor. The parole board has recommended clemency in a death row case only six times since the state resumed executions in 1982.

In his nearly 10 years as governor, Abbott has halted only one imminent execution, in 2018 when he spared the life of Thomas Whitaker, whose father had asked that his son not be put to death. The father had survived a shooting that Whitaker had masterminded.

“We pray that Governor Abbott does everything in his power to prevent the tragic, irreversible mistake of executing an innocent man,” Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s attorneys, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

Roberson’s lawyers also have a stay request pending before the Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court has rarely granted 11th-hour reprieves to people on death row.

Late Wednesday, a Texas House committee that held an all-day meeting on Roberson’s case, issued a subpoena for him to testify at a hearing next week. It was not immediately known if the committee’s request could delay Thursday’s execution. A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice didn’t immediately reply to an email.

One of those who has been pushing to stop Roberson’s execution is Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, who has been speaking with Abbott’s staff.

“I believe he is innocent,” Deason wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

During its meeting in Austin, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee heard testimony about Roberson’s case and whether a 2013 law created to allow people in prison to challenge their convictions based on new scientific evidence was ignored in Roberson’s case.

Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, whose office prosecuted Roberson, told the committee a court hearing was held in 2022 in which Roberson’s attorneys presented their new evidence to a judge, who rejected their claims. Mitchell said the prosecution’s case showed Curtis had been abused by her father.

“Based on the totality of the evidence, a murder took place here. Mr. Roberson took the life of his almost 3-year-old daughter,” Mitchell said.

Most of the members of the committee are part of a bipartisan group of more than 80 state lawmakers, including at least 30 Republicans, who had asked the parole board and Abbott to stop the execution.

Roberson’s scheduled execution has renewed debate over shaken baby syndrome, known in the medical community as abusive head trauma.

His lawyers as well as the Texas lawmakers, medical experts and others, including bestselling author John Grisham, say his conviction was based on faulty and now outdated scientific evidence. The diagnosis refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s supporters don’t deny head and other injuries from child abuse are real. But they say doctors misdiagnosed Curtis’ injuries as being related to shaken baby syndrome and that new evidence has shown the girl died from complications related to severe pneumonia.

Roberson’s attorneys say he was wrongly arrested and later convicted after taking his daughter to a hospital. They say she had fallen out of bed in Roberson’s home after being seriously ill for a week.

Roberson’s lawyers have also suggested his autism, which was undiagnosed at the time of his daughter’s death, was used against him as authorities became suspicious of him because of his lack of emotion over what had happened to her. Autism impacts how people communicate and interact with others.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, other medical organizations and prosecutors say the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome is valid and that doctors look at all possible things, including any illnesses, when determining if injuries were attributable to it.

Roberson’s scheduled execution would come less than a month after Missouri put to death Marcellus Williams amid lingering questions about his guilt and whether his death sentence should have instead been commuted to life in prison. Williams was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter.

Roberson’s execution is scheduled to take place on the same day Alabama is set to execute Derrick Dearman, condemned for killing five people with an ax and gun during a 2016 drug-fueled rampage.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

DALLAS (AP) — The federal judge considering Boeing’s plea deal with prosecutors wants to know how the Justice Department’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies would affect the selection of an independent monitor to oversee the aerospace company during a three-year probation period.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a conservative nominated to the federal bench in Fort Worth, Texas, by President George W. Bush in 2007, ordered the Justice Department to explain how it will pick the monitor and whether DEI considerations would — or should — influence the choice.

The judge asked Boeing whether it would follow its own DEI policy to block a proposed monitor.

The appointment of an independent monitor to make sure Boeing follows compliance and safety rules is a key component of the deal in which Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

O’Connor has long been a favorite of conservative lawyers looking for a court to hear their lawsuits against policies issued by Democratic presidents. In 2018, the judge issued a ruling striking down President Barack Obama’s hallmark Affordable Care Act, although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision. He also has sought to toss out expanded rights for transgender people.

Attacks against diversity, equity and inclusion have become a staple among conservative Republican politicians. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built a campaign for the GOP nomination for president against “woke” liberal policies, although his candidacy failed. A dozen states, including Texas, have new laws limiting or banning DEI policies at their public universities.

Conservatives argue that DEI lets less qualified people win admission to college or land important jobs that have a bearing on public safety. Some conservatives on social media blamed Boeing’s DEI policy after a door plug blew off one of its airliners during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Boeing struck a deal with the Justice Department in July in which the company agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for misleading federal regulators who approved pilot-training requirements for the 737 Max, the newest version of Boeing’s venerable 737 airliner.

As a result, airlines and pilots did not know about a new flight-control system called MCAS until it played a role in a deadly crash in Indonesia in October 2018. MCAS was implicated again in a second fatal Max crash that occurred in March 2019 in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died.

The plea agreement would require Boeing to pay a $243.6 million fine, spend at least $455 million on compliance and safety programs and accept the independent monitor’s oversight.

Boeing and the Justice Department want O’Connor to approve the deal, which would essentially replace a 2021 settlement that allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution but did little to stem concerns about the company’s commitment to safety and quality.

The Federal Aviation Administration increased its oversight of Boeing after the door-plug incident in January, and whistleblowers have alleged that the company cut corners on safety.

Relatives of passengers who died in the crashes want O’Connor to reject the plea agreement, which they call a sweetheart deal. They want Boeing to go on trial and face tougher punishment. They specifically oppose the section on the monitor because they want the judge — and not the government and Boeing — to pick the monitor.

Nadia Milleron, a Massachusetts woman whose daughter, Samya Stumo, died in the Ethiopia crash, said Wednesday that she did not know what to make of the judge’s line of questions about choosing the monitor.

“It seems irrelevant to me,” Milleron said. “The bottom line is safety, and if the judge is going after safety, great. I don’t understand his agenda with DEI.”

Experts on corporate behavior say the monitor could do more to improve safety than the 2021 settlement did so long as the person is truly independent and can report any concerns directly to the court without going through the Justice Department. The monitor would oversee Boeing’s compliance with safety protocols and its actions to prevent future acts of fraud.

During a hearing last week, O’Connor asked lawyers for the government and Boeing about the monitor and how DEI policies could affect the choice. The plea deal states that the Justice Department would select the person with “input” from Boeing.

A Justice Department lawyer said the provision doesn’t mean that a less-qualified person would be picked, only that the government will consider all candidates. Boeing lawyers did not object to the monitor-selection process outlined in the plea agreement.

In an order Tuesday, the judge wrote that it is important to know if DEI considerations would promote Boeing’s safety and compliance efforts. He asked the Justice Department and Boeing to respond in writing by Oct. 25.

“Both the DOJ and Boeing have publicly acknowledged their commitment to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’),” including a government plan to use diversity and equity in hiring federal workers, O’Connor wrote.

Boeing’s website, he added, “touts its commitment ‘to creating a culture of inclusion’ and ‘set of aspirations’ it will strive to achieve by 2025 to advance equity and diversity and build a culture of inclusion,” including racial quotas and hiring more Black workers.

In considering whether to accept the plea deal, O’Connor wrote, “it is important to know: how the provision promotes safety and compliance efforts” at Boeing and whether the company would strike an applicant based on its own DEI commitment.

It is not clear whether the judge is making a statement about DEI policies or whether he would seize on the issue to throw out the plea agreement.

“I do not see this as a strategic move, but as a detour motivated by the court’s skepticism of DEI,” said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University who studies corporate governance and white-collar crime and has followed the Boeing case. “He is a conservative. Possibly he wants to delay the decision, but that is an unsupported hunch.”

The Justice Department and Boeing said they would comply with the judge’s order and declined to comment further.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Transportation Department has tentatively awarded room for five new daily long-haul flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to five of the nation’s biggest airlines while rejecting proposals from some low-fare carriers.

The routes announced Wednesday would offer more options to travelers flying between Washington and major Western cities including San Francisco and Seattle.

The Transportation Department said it will take comments on its decision until Oct. 30, then allow answers to the comments until Nov. 8.

Many travelers prefer the convenience of Reagan National, which is a short Metro subway ride away from downtown Washington, to Dulles International Airport, located more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of the nation’s capital.

Flights longer than 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) to Reagan National are strictly limited by federal law, but under pressure from Delta Air Lines and others, Congress this year approved enough new takeoff and landing rights to support five new daily round trips.

Here are the winning airlines and their planned routes:

— Alaska Airlines, service to and from San Diego International Airport.

— American Airlines, to and from San Antonio International Airport in Texas.

— Delta, to and from Seattle Tacoma International Airport.

— Southwest Airlines, to and from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

— United Airlines, to and from San Francisco International Airport.

The Transportation Department rejected a bid by JetBlue Airways to add another flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The department ruled that Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines weren’t eligible because Congress limited the contest to carriers that already operate flights at Reagan National.

The new flights will add to the limited number of current long flights to the close-in airport from cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Denver.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man this week could become the first person executed in the U.S. for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

The Texas Board of Parole on Wednesday voted 6-0 against recommending clemency for Robert Roberson, who is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday. The board also denied him a 180-day reprieve.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott can only grant clemency after receiving a recommendation from the board, which had come under public bipartisan pressure in recent weeks to spare Roberson’s life.

Roberson, 57, is set to be executed for the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution.

Roberson has long proclaimed his innocence. His lawyers as well as a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, medical experts and others don’t deny that head and other injuries from child abuse are real. But they argue his conviction was based on faulty and now outdated scientific evidence and say new evidence has shown Curtis died from complications related to severe pneumonia.

But prosecutors maintain Roberson’s new evidence does not disprove their case that Curtis died from injuries inflicted by her father.

Roberson’s scheduled execution renewed debate over shaken baby syndrome. On one side of the debate are lawyers and some in the medical and scientific communities who argue the shaken baby diagnosis is flawed and has led to wrongful convictions. On the other side are prosecutors and medical societies from the U.S. and around the world who say the diagnosis is valid, has been scientifically proven and is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2 years of age.

Here’s what to know about the highly scrutinized diagnosis ahead of Roberson’s scheduled execution:
What is shaken baby syndrome?
The diagnosis refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is injured through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor, usually by an adult caregiver, said Dr. Suzanne Haney, a child abuse pediatrician and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

The term was changed in 2009 to abusive head trauma, a more inclusive diagnosis, Haney said.

There are about 1,300 reported cases of shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma in the U.S. each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

What is the debate over shaken baby syndrome?
Critics allege doctors have been focused on concluding child abuse due to shaken baby syndrome whenever a triad of symptoms — bleeding around the brain, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes — was found. Critics say doctors have not considered that things like short falls with head impact and naturally occurring illnesses like pneumonia, could mimic an inflicted head injury.

Roberson’s attorneys and other supporters are not saying that child abuse doesn’t exist or that shaking a baby is safe, said Kate Judson, executive director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that seeks to improve the reliability of forensic science evidence.

“This is a case about whether someone was misdiagnosed and justice wasn’t served,” Judson said.

While Haney declined to comment on Roberson’s case, she said there is no disagreement within a vast majority of the medical community about the validity and science behind the diagnosis.

Haney said doctors are not just focused on a triad of symptoms to determine child abuse, but instead look at all possible things, including any illnesses, that could have caused the injuries.

“I worry the pushback against abusive head trauma as a diagnosis is going to interfere with the prevention efforts that are out there and therefore allow more children to get harmed,” Haney said.

Judson said she believes that doctors in Roberson’s case did not consider all possible causes, including illness, to explain what happened to his daughter and used the triad of symptoms to only focus on child abuse.

What are the concerns Roberson’s supporters are raising?
Roberson’s attorneys say he was wrongly arrested and later convicted after taking his daughter to a hospital. She had fallen out of bed in their home in the East Texas city of Palestine after being seriously ill for a week.

New evidence gathered since his 2003 trial shows his daughter died from undiagnosed pneumonia that progressed to sepsis and was likely accelerated by medications that should not have been prescribed to her and made it harder for her to breathe, said Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s attorney.

The Anderson County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Roberson, has said in court documents that after a 2022 hearing to consider the new evidence, a judge rejected the theories that pneumonia and other diseases caused Curtis’ death.

What have courts said about shaken baby syndrome?
In recent years, courts around the country have overturned convictions or dropped charges centered on shaken baby syndrome, including in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan.

In a ruling last week in a different shaken baby syndrome case out of Dallas County, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial after finding scientific advancements related to the diagnosis would now likely result in an acquittal in that case.

But the appeals court has repeatedly denied Roberson’s request to stay his execution, most recently on Friday.

In the U.S., at least eight individuals have been sentenced to death because of shaken baby syndrome, said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Two of these eight have been exonerated and Roberson is the only one to have received execution dates.

“According to the National Registry of Exonerations, at least 30 people across the country have been exonerated based on this discredited scientific theory,” Maher said.

But Danielle Vazquez, executive director of the Utah-based National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, said a 2021 research article found that 97% of more than 1,400 convictions related to shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma from 2008 to 2018 were upheld and that such convictions were rarely overturned on the grounds of medical evidence.

Vazquez said her organization is worried that doubts that have been raised about the diagnosis could cause some parents or caregivers to wrongly think that shaking a baby is not harmful.