A Texas court docket has issued a keep of execution for Robert Roberson, a person whose 2003 homicide conviction has raised critical questions in regards to the validity of “shaken child syndrome” as a medical prognosis.
Thursday’s determination arrived with solely per week remaining till Roberson’s scheduled execution date on October 16.
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Roberson, a 58-year-old autistic man, was accused of getting killed his two-year-old daughter Nikki Michelle Curtis in January 2002, after he introduced her to a hospital emergency room unconscious.
He has maintained that Nikki had been sick and fell from her mattress in a single day. However prosecutors argued that her head trauma will need to have been attributable to “shaken child syndrome”, a prognosis popularised within the late Nineteen Nineties as proof of bodily abuse in infants and toddlers.
However that prognosis has been more and more rejected, as docs and medical researchers level out that the signs of “shaken child syndrome” — specifically, bleeding or swelling within the eyes or mind — could be attributable to different situations.
Roberson’s defence workforce has argued that Nikki suffered from persistent pneumonia within the lead-up to her demise, and the drugs she was given, together with codeine, contributed to her demise.
In Thursday’s determination, the judges on the Texas Court docket of Felony Appeals agreed to pause his execution in mild of an identical case being overturned in 2024.
Choose Bert Richardson contrasted the shifting nature of the medical analysis with the finality of execution in his concurring opinion.
“There’s a delicate steadiness and pressure in our felony justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy based mostly on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Choose Richardson wrote.
“A demise sentence is clearly ultimate and, as soon as carried out, hindsight is ineffective. Thus, when shifting ahead in such a means, we must always require the very best requirements of accuracy in order that we are able to act with a dependable diploma of certainty.”
However the court docket restricted its judgement to reopening Roberson’s petition for habeas corpus, which questions the constitutionality of an individual’s imprisonment.
It declined to rethink Roberson’s case as an entire. That prompted a few of the judges on the court docket to problem a partial dissent.
Choose David Schenck, for example, argued that “a brand new trial is important and mandated by our Structure”, given the brand new proof that has emerged within the 20 years since Roberson was sentenced to demise.
“The deserves of Roberson’s claims and the cumulative impact of the proof Roberson presents — in his fifth software in addition to his earlier and subsequent functions — can be extra correctly and extra swiftly assessed at this level by a jury in a brand new trial,” Schenck mentioned.
He added {that a} new trial would additionally supply the state of Texas “a possibility to current this case on its deserves”.
Nonetheless, some judges on the panel mentioned they had been against reopening the case, arguing that the shift in medical consensus didn’t rule out an act of violence in Nikki’s demise.
“Arguably credible and dependable scientific proof nonetheless exists to recommend that shaking a baby could cause critical harm or demise,” Choose Kevin Yeary wrote in his opinion.
This isn’t the primary time that Roberson’s case has been delayed. He has spent almost 23 years on demise row and was additionally slated to be executed a yr in the past, in October 2024.
However that execution date was scuttled in a unprecedented sequence of occasions. Together with his execution scheduled for October 17 of that yr, a bipartisan group of legislators within the Texas Home Committee on Felony Jurisprudence agreed to problem a subpoena for Roberson on October 21 — successfully establishing a battle between the legislature’s will and the court docket’s.
The subpoen sparked a court docket case in regards to the separation of powers in Texas: A witness couldn’t reply a legislative subpoena if the justice system executed him first.
Additional, the members of the Texas Home committee had argued {that a} 2013 state regulation barring using “junk science” in court docket instances had didn’t be utilized in Roberson’s case.
The case reached the Texas Supreme Court docket, which halted Roberson’s execution whereas the matter was resolved. Execution dates are set with not less than 90 days’ discover in Texas, leading to a chronic pause.
On July 16, after appeals from Roberson’s defence workforce, a brand new execution date was set for this month.
Texas Legal professional Common Ken Paxton, a Republican, has accused critics of Roberson’s sentence of “interfering with the capital punishment proceedings” and has repeatedly pledged to push ahead with the execution.
However even these concerned in Roberson’s unique capital homicide trial have sought to see his sentence overturned.
Brian Wharton, the lead investigator in Roberson’s case, had as soon as testified in favour of the prosecution. However final yr, he instructed the Texas Home committee that he supported Roberson’s attraction, given the brand new proof that has come to mild.
“He’s an harmless man, and we’re very near killing him for one thing he didn’t do,” Wharton mentioned.
On Thursday, one of many jurors who helped convict Roberson additionally revealed an opinion column within the Houston Chronicle, asserting that she was “improper” to facet with the prosecution.
“If we on the jury knew then what I do know now — in regards to the new proof of Nikki’s missed pneumonia, how her respiratory would have been affected by the Phenergan and codeine docs gave her that final week, the indicators of sepsis, and all of the issues that had been improper with the model of shaken child syndrome used within the case — we might have had much more to debate,” Terre Compton wrote.
“Based mostly on all that has come out because the trial, I’m 100% sure that Robert Roberson didn’t homicide his baby.”
Texas has executed 596 folks since 1982, essentially the most of any state.
