The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Robert Roberson (pic­tured), who had been sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on June 21 for the 2003 death of his two-and-a-half-year-old daugh­ter, Nikki Curtis. The court’s June 16 stay order halts Roberson’s exe­cu­tion under a recent Texas law per­mit­ting court chal­lenges based on new sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of inno­cence. Prosecution experts had tes­ti­fied at Roberson’s tri­al that his daugh­ter died of Shaken Baby Syndrome, assert­ing that the child exhib­it­ed symp­toms that she must have been shak­en or beat­en. Roberson said she had fall­en out of bed dur­ing the night, but that she seemed fine and went back to sleep. Hours lat­er, when he checked on her again, she was blue and could bare­ly breathe. Prosecutors charged him with mur­der and with sex­u­al­ly assault­ing his daugh­ter — although there was no evi­dence that she had been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. The sex­u­al assault charges were lat­er dropped, but only after the pros­e­cu­tion had dis­cussed them in open court in front of the jury. The court grant­ed Roberson review of four issues: that (1) new sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence estab­lish­es that he would not have been con­vict­ed; (2) the State’s use of ​“false, mis­lead­ing, and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid tes­ti­mo­ny” about Shaken Baby Syndrome vio­lat­ed due process; (3) Roberson is ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent of cap­i­tal mur­der”; and (4) ​“the State’s intro­duc­tion of false foren­sic sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny that cur­rent sci­ence has exposed as false” made his tri­al fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair. ​“Instead of tak­ing Robert’s expla­na­tion about a fall seri­ous­ly or explor­ing all pos­si­ble caus­es of the injury sus­tained by a chron­i­cal­ly ill child who had been at the doctor’s office with 104.5‑degree tem­per­a­ture only two days before,” Roberson’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween wrote, ​“a tragedy was hasti­ly deemed a crime and a father, doing the best he could to care for his daugh­ter despite severe cog­ni­tive impair­ments, was brand­ed a mur­der­er.” Roberson pre­sent­ed affi­davits from four med­ical experts chal­leng­ing the accu­ra­cy and sci­en­tif­ic valid­i­ty of the State’s shak­en baby tes­ti­mo­ny. Forensic pathol­o­gist Dr. Harry Bonnell, in an opin­ion shared by all four defense experts, wrote: ​“it is impos­si­ble to shake a tod­dler to death with­out caus­ing seri­ous neck injuries — and Nikki had none.” They sug­gest sev­er­al alter­nate the­o­ries for Curtis’ death, includ­ing menin­gi­tis caused by an ear infec­tion, a fall like the one Roberson described to inves­ti­ga­tors, or a con­gen­i­tal con­di­tion. Roberson’s appeal argues that, “[w]hen the tri­al record is viewed through the lens of cur­rent sci­ence and evi­dence-based med­i­cine, it is clear that he is inno­cent of cap­i­tal mur­der.” The court returned the case to the tri­al court in Anderson County to con­duct an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on Roberson’s claims. 

Roberson pre­vi­ous­ly filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, alleg­ing a con­flict of inter­est by his appeals coun­sel. The Court declined to hear the case. Texas has car­ried out six exe­cu­tions in 2016.

(J. Silver, ​“Court Halts Texas Man’s Execution in ​‘Shaken Baby’ Case,” Texas Tribune, June 17, 2016; C. Tolan, ​“Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute this man in six days — but four experts say he was con­vict­ed based on junk sci­ence,” Fusion, June 15, 2016.) Read Roberson’s motion for stay of exe­cu­tion here and the court’s stay order here. See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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