HOUSTON, Texas — Texas’ top criminal court on Thursday again paused the execution of Robert Roberson, just days before he was set to become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
This was the third execution date that Roberson’s lawyers have been able to stay since 2016, including one scheduled nearly a year ago, due to an unprecedented intervention from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who believe he is innocent.
The latest execution stay was granted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Roberson had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Oct. 16.
The court granted the stay based on Texas’ 2013 junk science law, which allows a person convicted of a crime to seek relief if the evidence used against them is no longer credible. In granting the stay, the court cited its October 2024 ruling that overturned a conviction in another shaken baby case out of Dallas. Roberson’s lawyers argue that case is indistinguishable from Roberson’s.
The appeals court sent Roberson’s case back to his trial court in East Texas for review.
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Since his first execution date more than nine years ago, Roberson’s lawyers have filed multiple petitions with state and federal appeals courts, as well as with the U.S. Supreme Court, to try and stop his execution. Over the years, they have also asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to stop his lethal injection, as part of their efforts to secure Roberson a new trial.
Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued that he hit his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma. They said she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome.
Roberson has long proclaimed his innocence, telling The Associated Press in an interview last week from death row in Livingston, Texas, that he never abused his daughter.
“I never shook her or hit her,” he said.
The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome 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 lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.
In their latest appeal, Roberson’s lawyers included what they say are new legal and scientific developments and expert analyses that show Nikki’s death was caused by illness and accident, not by abuse.
Roberson’s lawyers also included a joint statement from 10 independent pathologists who said the medical examiner’s autopsy report, which concluded Nikki died from blunt force head injuries, was “not reliable.”
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His attorneys have also claimed that new evidence shows judicial misconduct in Roberson’s case. They allege the judge who presided over Roberson’s trial never disclosed he was the one who authorized circumventing Roberson’s parental rights and allowing Nikki’s grandparents to remove her from life support.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as some medical experts and other family members of Nikki, maintain the girl died because of child abuse and that Roberson had a history of hitting his daughter.
In a Sept. 26 op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, three pediatricians, including two with the Yale School of Medicine, said they reviewed the case and “are convinced that Nikki was a victim of child abuse.”
Shaken baby syndrome has come under scrutiny in recent years; some lawyers and medical experts say the diagnosis has wrongly sent people to prison. Prosecutors and medical societies say it remains valid.
Roberson’s supporters include both liberal and ultraconservative lawmakers, Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, bestselling author John Grisham, and Brian Wharton, the former police detective who helped put together the case against him.
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