A listening to on Wednesday will decide whether or not Texas can proceed with a brand new execution date for condemned inmate Robert Roberson, who can be the first put to death in the United States in a case of so-called shaken baby syndrome.
Roberson, 58, faces a potential execution within the 2002 loss of life of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki. His case has drawn consideration from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who successfully halted his death in October with solely hours to spare after a flurry of eleventh-hour authorized maneuvering.
Since then, Roberson had been in limbo after submitting one other enchantment earlier this yr in a bid to win a brand new trial, whereas prosecutors pushed forward for one more execution date.
The workplace of Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton had requested last month that the Anderson County District Court docket schedule the brand new date for Roberson, writing in a movement that “the factors for setting an execution have been met.” Paxton has requested an Oct. 16 execution date, one yr after his execution was halted.
Smith County District Choose Austin Reeve Jackson is ready to listen to arguments concerning the lawyer common’s request.
Roberson’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween, beforehand accused Paxton of speeding to hunt an execution with out letting the litigation play out.
“Robert was nearly wrongfully executed final yr,” Sween mentioned in a press release in June. “However for the brave intervention of Texas lawmakers from each events the worst potential injustice would have been an irrevocable stain on Texas.”
Paxton, a Republican, had acquired the case from Anderson County District Legal professional Allyson Mitchell, who was dealing with the prosecution’s case in recent times. It is unclear why Paxton’s workplace was requested to take over, and his workplace did not instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the newest execution date.
Within the weeks after Roberson’s execution was stopped final fall, Paxton sparred with state lawmakers main the Home’s Legal Jurisprudence Committee. Members had used the committee’s subpoena energy to compel Roberson to testify at a listening to — an motion that successfully halted his execution.
However Paxton’s workplace prevented Roberson from showing in particular person, arguing the subpoena was “procedurally faulty and subsequently invalid.”
Roberson was set to testify in his case because it pertains to a 2013 “junk science” legislation that permits Texas inmates to probably problem convictions primarily based on advances in forensic science.
Roberson has maintained his innocence in his daughter’s loss of life. In January 2002, Roberson and Nikki fell asleep of their East Texas residence and he later awoke, he mentioned, after he heard a sound and located that the toddler had fallen away from bed, according to court documents.
Later that morning, when Roberson found his daughter was unconscious and her lips have been blue, he rushed her to an area emergency room. he confirmed little emotion, furthering legislation enforcement’s suspicions.
Inside a day, a police detective arrested Roberson on a capital homicide cost.
The jury in Roberson’s trial by no means heard the extent of how sick Nikki was from the day she was born, nor that she had been taken to the hospital greater than 40 instances in her brief life. Two days earlier than she died, she registered a 104.5 diploma fever on the physician’s workplace. She was despatched residence with the medicine Phenergan that has since been deemed too harmful for kids — a drug that now carries a “black field warning” from the Meals and Drug Administration.
Brian Wharton, the detective who arrested Roberson and has since retired, has mentioned publicly that he now believes Roberson is harmless.
Wharton told NBC News’ Lester Holt in October that he arrested Roberson with out data of Nikki’s medical historical past and that he was unaware that Roberson is autistic, which might have defined his lack of emotion. (Roberson was identified with autism spectrum dysfunction in 2018, years after Nikki’s loss of life.)
Whereas medical doctors and legislation enforcement concluded that Nikki was killed because of a violent shaking episode, Roberson’s protection workforce says a brand new understanding of “shaken child syndrome” reveals that different medical circumstances might be components in a baby’s loss of life, because it believes was in Nikki’s loss of life.
Paxton, nonetheless, is adamant Roberson is responsible of homicide.
In a listing of causes posted in October on X to set “the file straight,” he argued the daddy murdered his daughter by “beating her so brutally that she finally died.”
