The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the US 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 two-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from 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 at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.
Photo: AP
“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman 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 72km to the east, where the state’s male death row is.
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.
How the court stopped Roberson’s execution in the final hours underlined the extraordinary maneuvers used by a bipartisan coalition of Texas House of Representatives 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 by 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 had never been tried before, some of them said.
They said that executing Roberson before he could offer subpoenaed testimony would contravene 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 reversed by an appeals panel. The Texas Supreme Court weighed in with its order, ending a night of uncertainty.
Roberson is scheduled to testify before the committee on Monday.
“This is an innocent man. And there’s too much shadow of a doubt in this case,” Texas Representative John Bucy said. “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.”
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 say that 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 do not deny that head and other injuries from child abuse are real.
However, they say that 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.
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