Article of Interest: Retired Supervising Detective Says There Was No Crime in Robert Roberson’s Case

In a May 23, 2024 op-ed pub­lished in The Dallas Morning News, Brian Wharton, the retired super­vis­ing detec­tive in Robert Roberson’s case, urged Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell to reex­am­ine the case and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reex­am­ine a pend­ing motion on Mr. Roberson’s inno­cence claims, which have pre­vi­ous­ly been denied. ​“It would be a ter­ri­ble lega­cy for all of us to be asso­ci­at­ed with exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man based on a rush to judg­ment and bad sci­ence,” con­clud­ed Mr. Wharton. ​“We must pre­vent Texas from mak­ing a trag­ic, irreversible mistake.” 

Mr. Roberson’s con­vic­tion for the death of his two-year-old daugh­ter, Nikki, cen­tered around the now debunked the­o­ry of ​“shak­en baby syn­drome.” Mr. Wharton explains how the inves­ti­ga­tion large­ly relied on this ​“bad sci­ence” that was pre­sent­ed to the jury as ​“evi­dence-based sci­ence,” and high­lights that there have been 32 exon­er­a­tions of those wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed under this the­o­ry, accord­ing to the National Registry of Exonerations. Nikki’s autop­sy had showed severe pneu­mo­nia – infor­ma­tion that was not pro­vid­ed to Mr. Wharton dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion – for which she was tak­ing med­ica­tion that is no longer pro­vid­ed to chil­dren her age since it can cause ​“fatal breath­ing prob­lems.” Mr. Wharton states that “[n]ow it is rec­og­nized that many nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring dis­eases that cause oxy­gen depri­va­tion, includ­ing pneu­mo­nia, as well as short falls with a head impact, can cause the same set of inter­nal con­di­tions that Nikki had.” 

Mr. Wharton also high­lights sev­er­al oth­er trou­bling aspects of the case. For exam­ple, the jury was told that Nikki had been sex­u­al­ly abused, but this asser­tion relied sole­ly on the spec­u­la­tion of one nurse with­out any cor­re­spond­ing evi­dence. During the case, Mr. Roberson’s flat affect puz­zled Mr. Wharton, lead­ing him to expect the defense to present evi­dence of some men­tal health impair­ment at tri­al – which didn’t hap­pen. Only on appeal did the courts hear that Mr. Roberson had been diag­nosed with autism, which would explain his affect and pre­vent the neg­a­tive infer­ence that he was unemo­tion­al about his daughter’s death.