Anderson County, Texas District Attorney Requests Execution for Robert Roberson, Despite a Conviction Obtained with Debunked Forensic Science

On June 17, 2024, Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell filed a motion to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row pris­on­er Robert Roberson, despite his stead­fast main­te­nance of inno­cence in the death of his two-year-old daugh­ter. Mr. Roberson has spent more than 20 years on death row for a crime that, accord­ing to the Innocence Project, ​“nev­er occurred and a con­vic­tion based on the out­dat­ed and now debunked shak­en baby hypoth­e­sis.” New evi­dence indi­cates that Mr. Roberson’s daugh­ter, Nikki, died from a com­bi­na­tion of both acci­den­tal and nat­ur­al caus­es. In a brief of oppo­si­tion, Mr. Roberson’s attor­neys argue that Nikki died from ​“severe undi­ag­nosed pneu­mo­nia that caused her to cease breath­ing, col­lapse, and turn blue before she was dis­cov­ered uncon­scious.” Rather than iden­ti­fy­ing this pneu­mo­nia, doc­tors pre­scribed Nikki with a dan­ger­ous med­ica­tion that is no longer giv­en to young chil­dren, as it is known to sup­press res­pi­ra­tion in already infect­ed lungs. ​“There 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,” the petition outlines.

At the time of DA Mitchell’s request for an exe­cu­tion date, Mr. Roberson’s Motion for Notice and Opportunity to Be Heard Before Any Execution Date is Set, request­ing a court hear­ing, remains pend­ing before Texas’ 3^rd Judicial District Court. This motion explains that, since June 2016, Mr. Roberson’s attor­neys have devel­oped new evi­dence of his fac­tu­al inno­cence in the death of his daugh­ter. Mr. Roberson has anoth­er pend­ing sug­ges­tion in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), ask­ing the Court to recon­sid­er their pre­vi­ous rul­ing. The sug­ges­tion argues that anoth­er case, Ex parte Roark, also pend­ing before the TCCA, shows that ​“the State con­ced­ed the fal­si­ty of vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal expert tes­ti­mo­ny on the shak­en baby hypoth­e­sis.” Both Mr. Roberson and Mr. Roark were sen­tenced to death more than two decades ago using this the­o­ry and tes­ti­mo­ny from the same child abuse expert. The Dallas County pros­e­cu­tor has con­ced­ed that Mr. Roark should receive a new tri­al because of changes to sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, but DA Mitchell’s office has con­tin­u­ous­ly argued that the sci­ence in Mr. Roberson’s case has not changed.

In 2003, there was a med­ical con­sen­sus that a child with a spe­cif­ic set of inter­nal con­di­tions, all of which were present in Nikki’s case, must have been shak­en or struck with a blunt object. Mr. Roberson brought Nikki to the hos­pi­tal and was unable to explain the issues that his chron­i­cal­ly ill daugh­ter faced. At the hos­pi­tal, staff were unaware that Mr. Roberson has autism, and mis­con­strued his demeanor as lack of con­cern for his daugh­ter. Using one physician’s hypoth­e­sis that Nikki’s death was the result of shak­en baby syn­drome, police arrest­ed Mr. Roberson pri­or to an autop­sy being per­formed. At tri­al, Mr. Roberson’s attor­ney ignored his claims of inno­cence, instead con­ced­ing to the prosecution’s argu­ment that it was a ​“clas­sic” shak­en baby case, but that Mr. Roberson lacked intent to kill his daugh­ter. The pros­e­cu­tion also pre­sent­ed mis­lead­ing evi­dence from a nurse sug­gest­ing that Nikki was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed, despite the fact that the med­ical exam­in­er and fur­ther test­ing failed to con­firm her speculations.

In 2013, the Texas leg­is­la­ture passed a law that allows pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their wrong­ful con­vic­tions ​“by show­ing that changes in the field of foren­sic sci­ence either under­mined the integri­ty of the crim­i­nal tri­als that led to their con­vic­tions or exon­er­at­ed the defen­dant.” Since the pas­sage of this law, zero pris­on­ers on Texas’ death row have suc­cess­ful­ly raised claims under this law, includ­ing Mr. Roberson. Gretchen Sween, one of Mr. Roberson’s attor­neys, said that ​“each of the shak­en baby premis­es used to con­vict and sen­tence Mr. Roberson to death, con­sid­ered med­ical ortho­doxy in 2003, has since been debunked by evi­dence-based sci­ence. The courts or Governor Abbott must stop this mis­car­riage of jus­tice before it is too late.” Across the US, at least 18 states have for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ed par­ents and care­givers wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed under the shak­en baby hypoth­e­sis, accord­ing to the National Registry of Exonerations.