Execution of Texas man in 'shaken baby' case temporarily halted by judge
Texas lawmakers meet with Robert Roberson (center, in white) at a prison in Livingston, Texas, on Sept. 27. (AP Photo/Criminal Justice Reform Caucus)
A district judge in Texas has granted a temporary restraining order, effectively blocking the Thursday execution of Robert Leslie Roberson III after a bipartisan coalition of state House members unanimously voted to subpoena him following a Wednesday hearing. The extraordinary turn came less than 90 minutes before Roberson was scheduled to die. The Texas attorney general’s office said it will appeal the decision.
Roberson’s scheduled execution would mark the first time a death sentence has been imposed for a case related to shaken baby syndrome, a once widely accepted diagnosis that bolstered criminal prosecutions but has come under increasing scrutiny with evolving science.
The 57-year-old has long maintained his innocence in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, and in recent years drew intense, far-reaching support from Texas lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, scientific experts and even the lead detective who testified against him.
Roberson’s lawyers said he was convicted of a crime that never occurred and that Nikki died of natural causes from a severe case of viral pneumonia. At the time, doctors were taught that the presence of three specific symptoms known as “the triad”—which included brain swelling and bleeding on the brain surface and behind the eyes—were proof of shaken baby syndrome, a diagnosis that, in the absence of witnesses, was accepted as proof a child had been violently abused.
Roberson, who was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in 2018, had a flat affect and showed little visible emotion despite his daughter’s condition, which doctors and the lead detective on the case interpreted as evidence of his guilt. Brian Wharton, the detective, testified against Roberson at his 2003 trial. Wharton in the years since has testified that detectives too quickly accepted the shaken baby diagnosis and became one of the most outspoken supporters of Roberson’s innocence claim.
Moments after the decision by Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Roberson’s request for a stay of execution. While respecting the denial by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a lengthy statement explaining that the high court did not have grounds to intervene despite what she called Roberson’s “credible” claim of innocence.
Roberson’s is the latest high-profile death-penalty case in recent weeks to come under scrutiny because of questions about the quality of evidence used to convict the defendant, following cases in South Carolina and Missouri.
Wharton, the former detective, and John Grisham, the best-selling novelist and retired lawyer, were among those who made impassioned pleas in newspaper op-eds calling for Roberson to be spared.
In the past week, Roberson was denied clemency by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, while the state’s highest criminal court declined to stay his execution or reconsider new evidence in his case, even as that court last week agreed to overturn the 2000 conviction of a man sentenced to 35 years in prison in a similar shaken baby syndrome case.
Eighty-six Texas lawmakers signed a letter calling for Roberson to receive clemency. Several of the signees included pro-death-penalty Republicans who warned that their state was condemning an innocent man to die.
“Executing Robert would be a stain on our criminal justice system in Texas,” Republican state Rep. Lacey Hull told the Washington Post this week. Hull was among the state lawmakers who visited Roberson last month to pray with him.
In an unusual move, Texas lawmakers with the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence on Wednesday unanimously voted to subpoena Roberson in an effort to delay his execution, which Mangrum granted Thursday. The vote came at the end of a hearing called to discuss the effectiveness of a 2013 state law, colloquially known as the “junk science statute,” that gives defendants a pathway to challenge their convictions if new scientific evidence undermines that from their original trial.
Throughout the Wednesday hearing, lawmakers expressed frustration that the Texas courts had not been appropriately using the “junk science statute,” which they said had been enacted to correct wrongful convictions in cases like Roberson’s.
“Under the junk science statute, Robert deserves a new trial,” Hull told the Post. Hull noted that Roberson and his supporters in the Texas legislature saw his situation as representative of a larger problem of “innocent parents being convicted of child abuse” due to a misdiagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
In legal arguments over the years, Roberson’s lawyers said Nikki’s symptoms led doctors and investigators to wrongfully diagnose her injuries as the result shaken baby syndrome. The brain swelling and bleeding that doctors at the time believed indicated shaken baby syndrome had been caused by a fall the sick girl had suffered, Roberson’s lawyers argued.
In 2002, Roberson was a single father living in rural Palestine, Texas, with his young, chronically ill daughter who had experienced an array of ailments such as ear infections and unexplained “breathing apnea,” according to court documents. At 2 years old, Nikki had been to the doctor more than 45 times.
Nikki had been vomiting, coughing and running a fever in the days and week before she died, according to court records. The morning of Jan. 31, 2002, Roberson heard his daughter cry after falling out of bed, and after comforting her he went back to sleep, his lawyers said. Later that morning, he found the girl limp and unresponsive and rushed her to the emergency room.
When hospital staff at the emergency room noticed a lump on Nikki’s head, doctors ordered a CT scan that revealed a small bleed on the surface of Nikki’s brain—one of the symptoms of the “triad.” According to court records, the CT scan showed Nikki’s brain had swollen and shifted to one side, but doctors did not find other signs of abuse like fractures or abrasions.
Police arrested Roberson the next day, relying “solely” on an affidavit provided by a pediatrician at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, where Nikki had been transferred, according to court records.
For years, many doctors presumed the “triad” could be explained only by violent shaking. Since Roberson’s arrest in 2002, research has emerged showing diseases, genetic conditions and accidents—such as pneumonia, birth trauma and a short fall—can produce the same triad of symptoms.
The American Academy of Pediatrics in 2009 renamed shaken baby syndrome “abusive head trauma,” a broader diagnosis that recognized injuries can be inflicted by factors beyond just shaking.
Over the years, the reliability of the “shaken baby” diagnoses came under greater scrutiny in court cases. Since 1989, at least 32 people convicted under the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
