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A bipartisan majority of the Texas Home urged the state on Tuesday to grant clemency to a person who was sentenced to demise in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, however who has persistently maintained his innocence and argued that his conviction was primarily based on an unsound shaken child syndrome analysis.
One month out from Robert Roberson’s execution, 86 lawmakers signed a letter urgent the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to advocate clemency, which might be as much as Gov. Greg Abbott to grant. The board can take up till two days earlier than the execution, which is slated for Oct. 17, to make its suggestion.
The lawmakers, who comprise just below a supermajority of the Texas Home, cited “voluminous new scientific evidence” that they and Roberson’s attorneys argued demonstrates his innocence and explains that the reason for his daughter’s demise was pure and unintentional.
“It should shock all Texans that we are barreling towards an execution in the face of this new evidence,” the lawmakers wrote to the board. “Other states look to Texas as a leader for both enforcing the rule of law and addressing wrongful convictions. We now look to you to prevent our state from tarnishing that reputation by allowing this execution to proceed.”
Roberson has maintained his innocence whereas being held on demise row for greater than 20 years. The Board of Pardons and Paroles beneficial clemency in simply two capital circumstances out of the 85 purposes it thought of over the previous decade.
The Texas Court docket of Legal Appeals beforehand halted Roberson’s execution in 2016. However in 2023, the state’s highest felony courtroom determined that doubt over the reason for his daughter’s demise was not sufficient to overturn his demise sentence, and Roberson’s new execution date, Oct. 17, was set in July. Then, with out reviewing the deserves of his claims, the Texas Court docket of Legal Appeals final week dismissed each a movement to halt the execution and a remaining software for aid filed by Roberson’s attorneys.
Roberson was convicted in 2003 of killing his severely sick 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. Roberson had rushed her limp, blue physique to the hospital after waking to seek out her unconscious and fallen from the mattress of their Palestine dwelling in East Texas. However medical doctors and nurses, who have been unable to revive her, didn’t consider such a low fall might have precipitated the deadly accidents and suspected baby abuse.
At trial, medical doctors testified that Nikki’s demise was in step with shaken child syndrome — wherein an toddler is severely injured from being shaken violently backwards and forwards — and a jury convicted Roberson.
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The Court docket of Legal Appeals stopped Roberson’s execution in 2016 and despatched the case again to the trial courtroom after the scientific consensus round shaken child diagnoses cracked. Whereas medical professionals have been skilled on the time of Nikki’s demise to presume abuse when infants offered sure inner head accidents, Roberson’s attorneys argued that these signs have now been linked to varied naturally occurring diseases and accidents.
The keep of execution in 2016 got here largely as a product of a trailblazing 2013 state legislation, dubbed the “junk science law,” which permits Texas courts to overturn a conviction when the scientific proof used to achieve a verdict has since modified or been discredited.
Lawmakers, in passing the invoice, highlighted circumstances of toddler trauma that used defective science to convict defendants as examples of the circumstances the laws was meant to focus on. However critics have argued that within the decade because the legislation was codified, it has not often offered justice as supposed for wrongfully convicted people.
“We changed the law to give that path. As far as we can tell, though, the courts simply aren’t engaging in that process,” Texas Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso and co-chair of the Legal Justice Reform Caucus, stated on Tuesday. “We shouldn’t be executing someone when there’s this much doubt about whether a crime was even committed.”
Roberson’s legal professionals submitted his petition for clemency on Tuesday, together with letters of assist signed by dozens of scientists and medical professionals, parental rights teams, organizations that advocate for individuals with autism, religion leaders, and attorneys who’ve represented individuals wrongfully convicted of kid abuse.
Over the course of his appeals, Roberson’s legal professionals sought to debunk the shaken child analysis that led to his conviction. They argued {that a} vary of professional opinions and new proof — together with medical data that illustrated Nikki’s sickness and medicines within the days main as much as her demise and a long-lost CAT scan — show that she died of pure and unintentional causes, not of head trauma.
“No informed doctor today would presume abuse based on a triad of internal head conditions, as occurred in Robert’s case,” his attorneys wrote in his petition for clemency. “But in the era when Robert was accused and convicted, conventional medical thinking gave doctors permission to skip consideration of any other factors and presume shaking and inflicted head trauma — an approach that has since been completely rejected as unsound.”
In Roberson’s final petition for aid that was denied on Sept. 11, his attorneys wrote that Nikki had “severe, undiagnosed” pneumonia that precipitated her to cease respiratory, collapse and switch blue earlier than she was found. As an alternative of figuring out her pneumonia within the days main as much as her demise, they wrote, medical doctors prescribed her Phenergan and codeine, medication which are now not given to kids her age and that additional suppressed her respiratory.
“It is irrefutable that Nikki’s medical records show that she was severely ill during the last week of her life,” Roberson’s attorneys wrote in courtroom paperwork, noting that within the week earlier than her demise, Roberson had taken Nikki to the emergency room as a result of she had been coughing, wheezing and fighting diarrhea for a number of days, and to her pediatrician’s workplace, the place her temperature was 104.5 levels.
Prosecutors, in the meantime, have maintained that the proof supporting Roberson’s conviction remains to be “clear and convincing” and that the science round shaken child syndrome has not modified as a lot as his protection attorneys claimed.
Roberson’s attorneys additionally argued that his autism — which was not identified till 2018 — “directly contributed” to his conviction, with medical doctors and legislation enforcement viewing his “flat demeanor” as a “sign of culpability.”
“This Board has the power to show mercy to a man who will always be profoundly impacted by his disability and who has worked hard to better himself and his community despite those challenges,” his attorneys wrote in his clemency petition.
Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated Nikki’s demise and sided towards Roberson at trial, has stated he now believes in Roberson’s innocence, particularly after studying of his incapacity, and has advocated for his exoneration.
“I will be forever haunted by my participation in his arrest and prosecution,” Wharton, who submitted a letter in assist of clemency, stated on Tuesday. “He is an innocent man.”
Lawmakers urging clemency additionally seized on Roberson’s remedy after his arrest. Nikki was transported to Kids’s Medical Middle Dallas after he introduced her to the emergency room, however Roberson, who was positioned in a suicide jail cell when investigators suspected abuse, was not permitted to affix her, in response to his attorneys, nor was he informed when she was taken off life assist.
“I and many others are troubled by the facts of this case, not only the rushed and mistaken accusation of child abuse, but the disregard for Robert’s parental rights throughout the investigation,” Texas Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston and co-vice chair of the Legal Justice Reform Caucus, stated. “Regardless of our individual positions on the death penalty, I think we can all agree that putting a potentially innocent man to death for a crime that may not have occurred would be a grave miscarriage of justice.”
Letters of assist from Roberson’s family members, mates and religious advisers depicted a mild man of religion who was involved most of all about his two grown kids with disabilities, and who remembered individuals’s favourite colours and despatched handmade birthday playing cards to everybody he met.
“What immediately stood out to me was his compassionate character, his joyful demeanor, and [his] genuine interest in the person sitting across from him,” wrote Merel Pontier, who stated she met Roberson over 4 years in the past. “For Robert, the glass is always half-full, not half-empty.”
