EGN NEWS DESK
Robert Roberson is ready to be executed by the State of Texas on Thursday, Oct. 17, amid outcry from some lawmakers and advocates who argue that he’s harmless.
On Jan. 31, 2002, Roberson introduced his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, to a hospital in Palestine, Texas. He stated she was sick with a excessive fever and had suffered a fall from mattress. Court paperwork state that on the hospital, she was “not respiration and had a blue shade to her pores and skin.” She was then dropped at a hospital in Dallas through helicopter, the place she was pronounced dead. Hospital employees raised suspicions of abuse, primarily based on Nikki’s accidents. It was decided that her accidents had been in keeping with shaken child syndrome—a type of baby abuse wherein a child is shaken repeatedly, inflicting their mind to bounce in opposition to their cranium.
The hospital employees argued that Roberson, regardless of his daughter’s situation, was missing emotion. The following day, Feb.1, 2002, Roberson, now 57, was charged with capital homicide.
Though shaken child syndrome has been credited as reputable by many pediatricians, the American Association of Pediatrics acknowledged in 2020 that it has been “misinterpreted” by some within the authorized and medical circles. Roberson’s legal professionals argue that the science behind shaken child syndrome and Roberson’s conviction is inaccurate.
“It wasn’t a criminal offense dedicated,” Roberson, 57, advised CNN a couple of week earlier than his scheduled deadly injection. “I used to be falsely, wrongly convicted of a criminal offense—they stated it was a criminal offense, however it wasn’t no crime and stuff as a result of I had a sick little lady, you realize?”
Roberson has spent over 20 years on loss of life row. If executed, his attorneys declare it might make him the primary particular person within the United States executed on a shaken child syndrome-based conviction.
On Oct. 11, Roberson misplaced certainly one of his remaining appeals with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals—an enchantment which pointed to latest developments in scrutiny over shaken child syndrome. In a non-capital case in Dallas County, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction of a person on Oct. 9 in a case that additionally concerned a prosecution underneath the speculation of shaken child syndrome.
Court data present that Nikki suffered from a number of well being issues requiring frequent physician visits in her younger life. A physician testified that, within the days earlier than her loss of life, Nikki had an higher respiratory an infection.
Roberson’s case has acquired extra widespread consideration since his execution date was set again in July. In his nook lies Brian Wharton, a former assistant police chief in Palestine, Texas, who helped put Roberson in jail. Now a minister, Wharton regrets his half within the conviction.
In a New York Times opinion video, Wharton went to go to Roberson in jail, marking the primary time they’d seen one another in additional than 20 years.
“He’s by no means been removed from my thoughts. Why? Because I helped put him right here and he didn’t deserve it,” Wharton stated.
Wharton went on to say that Nikki was a “very sick baby,” and that he believes there may have been a number of different the explanation why she died in 2002.
“No different potentialities for her accidents had been thought of,” he stated. “I remorse deeply that we adopted the simplest path.”
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The Eleventh-hour appeals for Roberson come lower than a month after the tireless efforts from prison justice reform teams and activists to enchantment the execution of loss of life row inmate Marcellus Williams in Missouri amid critical issues that he could also be harmless. Williams was executed on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 55 years previous after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a keep of execution. In the aftermath of his loss of life, there was widespread condemnation, particularly because the execution was not supported by the prosecution nor the sufferer’s household.
Now, comparable teams together with The Innocence Project— a nonprofit preventing in opposition to wrongful convictions—are interesting to the general public to assist stall Roberson’s execution by having them name Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The Innocence Project argues that “signs” of Roberson’s autism—which on the time of his daughter’s loss of life was undiagnosed—“had been used in opposition to him.”
In 2018, Abbott commuted the loss of life sentence of Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, following a unanimous determination by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Whitaker now serves a sentence of life in jail with out parole. In May, Abbott additionally pardoned Daniel Perry, a veteran who killed a police brutality protester in 2020.
A bipartisan majority of Texas state legislators within the House are nonetheless pushing for Roberson’s execution to be halted. In September, 86 members of the Texas House signed a letter urgent the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to advocate clemency. They beforehand halted Roberson’s execution again in 2016.
“We’re barreling in the direction of an execution when a robust bipartisan majority of #txlege reps aren’t even positive a criminal offense occurred—and are very positive due course of didn’t,” Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso wrote on X (previously Twitter) on Oct. 11. “We must do all we will to pump the brakes earlier than this stains Texas justice for generations.”
