Criminal appeals court: No new trial for East Texas death row inmate

AUSTIN – After years of courtroom scrutiny over the now-questionable science of “shaken baby syndrome,” the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided Wednesday that doubt surrounding the cause of his daughter’s death was not enough to overturn Robert Roberson’s death sentence. That’s according to our news partner KETK and the Texas Tribune. Roberson, 56, of Palestine, was convicted of killing his sickly two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after he rushed her blue, limp body to the emergency room in 2002. He said that the two were sleeping in their Palestine home when he awoke to find Nikki unresponsive, having fallen off the bed. But doctors and nurses quickly suspected child abuse, disbelieving that such a short fall could have caused the fatal injuries.

Instead, doctors testified at trial that Nikki’s injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome, where an infant is killed from being violently shaken back and forth, and jurors found him guilty of capital murder. In 2016, he was set for execution. But the Court of Criminal Appeals stopped his death, sending the case back to the trial court for further review after the scientific consensus on shaken baby syndrome shifted. The appeal process has continued since then, but Roberson can now be scheduled for a new execution date.