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PALESTINE (AP) — Texas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highest criminal court on Wednesday declined to stop the execution next month of Robert Roberson, who was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, but who has consistently challenged his conviction on the claim that it was based on questionable science.<\/p>\n
Without reviewing the merits of Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s claims, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday dismissed<\/a> both a motion to halt the execution<\/a> and a new application for relief<\/a> filed by his attorneys. That leaves Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s execution on track for Oct. 17, unless he can win clemency from the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Board of Pardons and Paroles.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Robert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fate is now at the mercy of the Governor,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawyers, said in a statement. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are devastated by this staggering development but will continue to pursue any avenue to make sure that Mr. Roberson is not the first person in the U.S. executed under the discredited \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcShaken Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 hypothesis.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Roberson has maintained his innocence while being held on death row for more than 20 years. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals previously halted<\/a> his execution in 2016. But in 2023, the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highest criminal court decided that doubt over the cause of his daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death was not enough to overturn<\/a> his death sentence. His new execution date, Oct. 17, was set in July.<\/p>\n Roberson was convicted in 2002 of killing his sickly 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. He had rushed her blue, limp body to the hospital and said that Nikki fell from the bed while they were sleeping in their home in the East Texas town of Palestine, and that he awoke to find her unresponsive. But doctors and nurses, who were unable to revive her, did not believe such a low fall could have caused the fatal injuries and suspected child abuse.<\/p>\n At trial, doctors testified that Nikki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death was consistent with shaken baby syndrome \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in which an infant is severely injured from being shaken violently back and forth \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and a jury convicted Roberson.<\/p>\n The Court of Criminal Appeals in 2016 stopped his execution and sent the case back to the trial court after the scientific consensus around shaken baby syndrome diagnoses came into question<\/a>. Many doctors believe the condition is used as an explanation for an infant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death too often<\/a> in criminal cases, without considering other possibilities and the baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s medical history.<\/p>\n The Court of Criminal Appeals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 decision in 2016 was largely a product of a 2013 state law, dubbed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153junk science law,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which allows Texas courts to overturn a conviction when the scientific evidence used to reach a verdict has since changed or been discredited. Lawmakers, in passing the law, highlighted cases of infant trauma that used faulty science to convict defendants as examples of the cases the legislation was meant to target. Critics have argued that in the decade since the law was codified, it has rarely provided justice<\/a> as intended for wrongfully convicted individuals.<\/p>\n Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attorneys, in his latest habeas corpus petition denied on Wednesday, cited new evidence and three expert opinions that they said proved that Nikki died of natural and accidental causes \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not of head trauma.<\/p>\n They said that Nikki had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153severe, undiagnosed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pneumonia that caused her to stop breathing, collapse and turn blue before she was discovered. Then, instead of identifying her pneumonia, doctors prescribed her Phenergan and codeine, drugs that are no longer given to children her age, further suppressing her breathing, they argued.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is irrefutable that Nikki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s medical records show that she was severely ill during the last week of her life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attorneys wrote in their opposition to setting an execution date, noting that in the week before her death, Roberson had taken Nikki to the emergency room because she had been coughing, wheezing and struggling with diarrhea for several days, and to her pediatrician\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office, where her temperature came in at 104.5 degrees.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There was a tragic, untimely death of a sick child whose impaired, impoverished father did not know how to explain what has confounded the medical community for decades,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n They have also argued that new scientific evidence suggests that it is impossible to shake a toddler to death without causing serious neck injuries, which Nikki did not have.<\/p>\n And they argued that Roberson, who was later diagnosed with autism, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153treated with suspicion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for not displaying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sufficient emotion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the hospital. Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated Nikki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death and testified against Roberson, has since said<\/a> he no longer believes that Roberson is guilty of Nikki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death and pressed for relief.<\/p>\n Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attorneys also cited developments<\/a> in a similar case in Dallas County, in which a man was convicted of injuring a child. His conviction was based in part on now partially recanted testimony from a child abuse expert who provided similar testimony on shaken baby syndrome in Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case. Prosecutors in Dallas County have said the defendant should get a new trial.<\/p>\n In 2023, when the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Roberson a new trial, prosecutors argued that the evidence supporting Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conviction was still \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clear and convincing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that the science around shaken baby syndrome had not changed as much as his defense attorneys claimed.<\/p>\n The scheduling of Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s execution triggers a series of deadlines for any last filings in state and federal court to seek relief and begin a request for clemency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PALESTINE (AP) — Texas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highest criminal court on Wednesday declined to stop the execution next month of Robert Roberson, who was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, but who has consistently challenged his conviction on the claim that it was based on questionable science. Without reviewing the merits of Roberson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s claims, … Continue reading Court declines to stop execution of man in shaken baby conviction<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1354661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2024\/09\/PALESTINEDEATHROW-225x180.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1354659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 13:23:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2024\/09\/PALESTINEDEATHROW-225x180.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1354659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1354759,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354659\/revisions\/1354759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1354661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1354659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1354659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1354659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}