Execution warrant upheld for East Texas man

PALESTINE – A district court will not throw out the execution warrant for Robert Roberson III, an East Texas man on death row accused of killing his daughter. According to our news partner KETK, Roberson, a Palestine native, was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter Nikki in 2002 and sentenced to death. He has maintained his innocence while on death row for the past 20 years, with an execution date scheduled for Oct. 17.

The defense’s motion to vacate Roberson’s execution warrant was denied by Judge Alfonso Charles, who is the Presiding Judge of the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region, on Tuesday. Charles was also asked to decide whether to remove the previous now-retired judge, Deborah Oakes Evans, from the case. He denied both the motion to recuse the execution warrant and the motion to vacate Judge Evans from the case.

Roberson attended court remotely via Zoom from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston where death row inmates are housed. Arguments were heard in front of a full courtroom of reporters of spectators.

His attorneys say he was wrongfully arrested and later convicted after taking his daughter to a hospital after she fell out of bed in their Palestine home. She had been seriously ill for a week, they said. He was arrested due to a doctor’s pre-autopsy hypothesis that Nikki died from Shaken Baby Syndrome.

His defense team is looking to cast doubt on Shaken Baby Syndrome’s legitimacy, citing other cases where convictions were overturned centered on the syndrome. His defense team said new evidence gathered since his 2003 trial show that “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.”

After the Tuesday hearing, lawmakers, activists and exonerees from previous wrongful convictions joined Roberson’s attorneys on the courthouse steps to talk to the press.

“I’m enraged, I’m heartbroken, and we are not giving up this fight,” one of Roberson’s attorneys, Gretchen Sween, said. “We have filed something this very morning, a subsequent habeas petition under the same junk science law. God please be with us this time, because just last week Texas’ highest criminal court declared the science used to convict Robert is not reliable, and yet he can’t have the evidence even considered.”

Sween cited the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granting a new trial for Andrew Roark, who was convicted in a Shaken Baby Syndrome case in 2000 in Dallas County. Justices cited the 2013 Junk Science Writ to prove the science used to convict him is outdated, per the Dallas Morning News.

Roark’s ruling, Sween argues, is basis for a new trial for Roberson. For now, Roberson’s attorneys are asking for a 30-day stay of execution. If their efforts in the courts fail, Gov. Greg Abbott, could step in and halt the execution.