In Texas, execution looms despite questions in shaken baby case
HOUSTON — Texas is preparing for the execution this week of an autistic man, Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny for its reliance on a questionable diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
A majority of the Republican-dominated Texas House has called for the execution to be halted. The detective who helped obtain the murder conviction now says he is “firmly convinced that Robert is an innocent man.”
Roberson would be the first person executed in a shaken baby case, his lawyers said. The diagnosis, a medical determination that abuse has caused serious or fatal head trauma, gained prominence more than three decades ago and led to a spate of criminal convictions. As evidence emerged that the diagnosis was not always reliable, some have since been reversed.
In Roberson’s case, the defense has insisted that no crime was committed. Lawyers have presented new evidence and expert testimony since the trial suggesting that Roberson’s daughter, Nikki, died in 2002 as a result of pneumonia and a prescribed medication she had taken.
So far, the courts in Texas have been unmoved.
With an execution date set for Thursday, Roberson’s lawyers and his supporters have appealed to the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend clemency, or a reprieve, and have urged Gov. Greg Abbott to grant it.
The case has renewed the debate over shaken baby syndrome and how — or even whether — it should be diagnosed.
The diagnosis is recognized by the American Academy of Pediatrics, but some doctors, forensic experts and defense lawyers have questioned its reliability in criminal cases, particularly those from decades ago when the science was less understood.
In Roberson’s case, the diagnosis came in the absence of any history of abuse, his lawyers argued, and did not take into account his daughter’s serious medical problems, which had led him to take her to the emergency room and to see doctors for treatment in the days before her death.
Roberson’s execution was halted once before, in 2016, by the state’s highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Last week, the same high court ordered a new trial for a Dallas-area man who was convicted in 2000 of injuring a child by shaking, raising new hopes for Roberson’s supporters.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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