A Texas court docket has issued a keep of execution for Robert Roberson, a person whose 2003 homicide conviction has raised critical questions concerning the validity of “shaken child syndrome” as a medical analysis.
Thursday’s determination arrived with solely every 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 should have been brought on by “shaken child syndrome”, a analysis popularised within the late Nineteen Nineties as proof of bodily abuse in infants and toddlers.
However that analysis 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 brought on by different circumstances.
Roberson’s defence crew has argued that Nikki suffered from continual pneumonia within the lead-up to her loss of life, and the medicines she was given, together with codeine, contributed to her loss of life.
In Thursday’s determination, the judges on the Texas Court docket of Prison 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 stress in our prison justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy primarily based on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Choose Richardson wrote.
“A loss of life sentence is clearly ultimate and, as soon as carried out, hindsight is ineffective. Thus, when transferring ahead in such a approach, we should always require the 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 a complete. That prompted among the judges on the court docket to difficulty a partial dissent.
Choose David Schenck, as an example, argued that “a brand new trial is critical and mandated by our Structure”, given the brand new proof that has emerged within the twenty years since Roberson was sentenced to loss of life.
“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 purposes — could 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 chance to current this case on its deserves”.
Nonetheless, some judges on the panel mentioned they have been against reopening the case, arguing that the shift in medical consensus didn’t rule out an act of violence in Nikki’s loss of life.
“Arguably credible and dependable scientific proof nonetheless exists to recommend that shaking a toddler may cause critical damage or loss of life,” 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 loss of life row and was additionally slated to be executed a 12 months in the past, in October 2024.
However that execution date was scuttled in a rare sequence of occasions. Together with his execution scheduled for October 17 of that 12 months, a bipartisan group of legislators within the Texas Home Committee on Prison Jurisprudence agreed to difficulty 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 concerning 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 the usage of “junk science” in court docket circumstances had did not 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 a minimum of 90 days’ discover in Texas, leading to a protracted pause.
On July 16, after appeals from Roberson’s defence crew, a brand new execution date was set for this month.
Texas Lawyer Basic 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 12 months, he informed 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 printed an opinion column within the Houston Chronicle, asserting that she was “incorrect” to facet with the prosecution.
“If we on the jury knew then what I do know now — concerning the new proof of Nikki’s missed pneumonia, how her respiration 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 have been incorrect with the model of shaken child syndrome used within the case — we might have had much more to debate,” Terre Compton wrote.
“Primarily based on all that has come out because the trial, I’m 100% sure that Robert Roberson didn’t homicide his little one.”
Texas has executed 596 folks since 1982, essentially the most of any state.
