Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested a new execution date for Robert Roberson last week, the Texas Tribune reported. Roberson was sentenced to death in Texas in in 2003 for the death one year earlier of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki. Nikki passed away from prior medical conditions after a fall from a bed, but prosecutors insisted she died of shaken baby syndrome, a diagnosis which has been debunked time and time again as junk science, and yet is still charged by prosecutors in capital cases.
Roberson’s lawyers maintain that a district court cannot schedule a new execution date while Roberson has an appeal pending, according to the Tribune. That appeal, filed in February, “includes new expert opinions finding that Nikki’s shaken baby diagnosis was unsound and that the autopsy that concluded her death was a homicide was flawed,” according to the Tribune.
Roberson was scheduled to be executed last October. But the Texas Supreme Court stayed the execution, and a bipartisan group of Texas legislators, alarmed by the myriad problems with his case, held a public hearing during which lawyer-turned-crime writer John Grisham, TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, and Roberson’s legal team all testified on his behalf.
Also testifying was a juror on Roberson’s case, who contradicted AG Paxton, who’s now insisting that Roberson was found guilty of beating Nikki to death, not of causing her death by SBS. Terre Compton said the prosecution based its whole case on Nikki having died from SBS — including a demonstration of a rag doll being violently shaken to demonstrate what they said Roberson had done to Nikki — and didn’t introduce evidence of Nikki’s long medical history.
“Knowing what you know now, did the jury get it right?,” Rep. Brian Harrison asked Compton during the hearing.”No sir,” she answered. “Knowing what you know now, do you believe Robert Roberson murdered Nikki?” he asked. “No, sir. 100 percent,” she answered.
Roberson also has wide-ranging support from scientists, doctors, faith leaders, innocence groups, attorneys who have represented clients wrongfully accused of murder by shaken baby syndrome, and former federal judges. The lead detective on Roberson’s case, who testified for the prosecution at his 2003 trial, now believes Roberson is innocent. Last July, the New York Times posted a powerful and beautifully written video documenting a meeting between the two men on death row. “There is unassailable doubt that Robert did it,” the detective says. As for Roberson, he says, “I just hope and pray that we can make things right together.”
“The overwhelming medical and scientific evidence now shows that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes,” the Innocence Project stated.
No one in the United States has been executed based on a conviction for shaken baby syndrome.
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