# Robert Roberson case

Robert Leslie Roberson III (born November 10, 1966) is an American man convicted and on death row for the murder of his two-year-old daughter in 2002. Roberson was accused of shaking his daughter and causing her death, and was tried and convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2003. He has lost his appeals since.
Roberson's conviction was based on blunt force trauma through shaken baby syndrome, which has been argued by some to be "junk science", leading to controversy over the conviction. In addition, Roberson's lawyers argued that his daughter had suffered from pneumonia which had progressed into sepsis by the time of her death. However, the use of the 2013 "junk science law" as a defense was not successful. Roberson maintained his innocence throughout the appeal process. Roberson was originally scheduled to be executed on October 17, 2024, but the Texas Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to allow his testimony before the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence. However, the committee ultimately refused to hear Roberson's testimony but allowed testimony from others, including a juror on the case who said that the new evidence would have led her to find Roberson "not guilty".

## Background

Robert Leslie Roberson III was born on November 10, 1966, in Wood County, Texas. Official records showed that between 1991 and 1999, Roberson was convicted of burglary, theft and parole violations; he was released from prison in 2000.
Prior to 2002, Roberson was divorced with two children, and he also fathered a daughter with another woman, who was reputedly a habitual drug abuser and sex worker. The girl, Nikki Michelle Curtis, was born on October 20, 1999, and entrusted to the care of her maternal grandparents; Roberson was granted custody of Nikki after he underwent DNA testing, which confirmed that he was the biological father of Nikki. Nikki was said to have had several chronic health problems soon after her birth.

## Daughter's death and murder trial

On January 31, 2002, two years after the end of his most recent time in prison, Roberson brought an injured Nikki to the hospital. He stated to hospital authorities that his daughter had fallen from her bed and sustained head injuries, and was unconscious and not breathing when he awoke and found her. In spite of medical treatment, two-year-old Nikki Curtis was later pronounced dead after attempts to revive her failed.
The doctors and nurses, however, did not believe that the injuries were caused by a fall and suspected they could have been caused by child abuse. Moreover, doctors and investigators reported that they observed unusual behavior from Roberson as he reported his daughter's injuries. Therefore, a police report was launched and Roberson was arrested the following day after his daughter's death. He was charged with murder, an offense that carries either life imprisonment or the death penalty under Texas state law.
At trial, the prosecution argued that Roberson intentionally murdered Nikki by means of lethal head injuries through severe abuse. During the court trial, medical experts theorized that Nikki’s death was, in part, caused by "shaken baby syndrome", which involves the violent shaking of an infant resulting in severe head injuries. Roberson denied that he inflicted the fatal injuries to Nikki, although testimony given at trial suggested that Roberson had abused his ex-wife and two older children in the past. Additionally, Roberson's ex-wife testified that he choked and punched her when she was pregnant. The defense suggested that Roberson’s ex-wife and Nikki’s mother were unreliable witnesses. They believed she had motivation to lie, having lost custody of their two children years prior in a drawn-out court battle, noting that she was flown in from Alabama to testify. Multiple witnesses, all related to Teddie Cox, testified that they had seen Roberson shake Nikki on prior occasions.
According to prosecutors, physicians reported that Nikki suffered and ultimately died of "massive head trauma". Prosecutors argued that in the emergency room, Nikki was found to have "a bruise on the back of her shoulder, a scraped elbow, a bruise over her right eyebrow, bruises on her chin, a bruise on her left cheek, an abrasion next to her left eye, multiple bruises on the back of her head, a torn frenulum in her mouth, bruising on the inner surface of the lower lip, subscapular and subgaleal hemorrhaging between her skin and her skull, subarachnoid bleeding, subdural hematoma, both pre-retinal and retinal hemorrhages and brain edema." Additionally, four separate doctors testified Nikki had "multiple blows to different points on the head", which could not have been caused by falling off a bed. At trial, Roberson's defense expert admitted that Roberson "lost it" and shook Nikki because he could not stop her from crying.
On February 21, 2003, Roberson was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by an Anderson County jury.
Roberson filed an appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals but the appeal was dismissed on July 22, 2007. Another two appeals were rejected in May and August 2015, respectively, by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

## Post-conviction controversy

Throughout the following years, the case of Roberson began to garner attention due to the fact that a key factor of his conviction was "shaken baby syndrome", a scientific theory that some critics label junk science despite the majority of researchers in the field recognizing that some patterns of injury are suggestive of abuse which may at least partially be the result of shaking. Apart from the theory, Roberson's lawyers also argued that the conviction should not stand, since the medical experts at trial had failed to consider alternative explanations behind the cause of death or take into account the chronic health conditions which Nikki suffered prior to her death. Among the new evidence submitted was that Nikki suffered from pneumonia and which had developed into sepsis, and Roberson's defense argued that this led to her death rather than the head injuries, adding that the medicine administered to Nikki by doctors during her treatment was no longer prescribed to children in the present day due to its serious complications. However, the prosecutors maintained that Roberson's new evidence did not dispute that Nikki died from the head injuries inflicted by her father. Alternatively, bruising and internal bleeding could have been caused via reorientation of the skull to adjust for urgent intubation in an effort to prevent brain death.
Another factor in this controversy was that, after his trial, Roberson was reportedly diagnosed with autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder that could lead to difficulties in social communication. According to a former detective, the revelation of this undiagnosed condition made him realize that the strange behavior displayed by Roberson in response to his daughter's death, behavior which prompted investigators' suspicions of Roberson, was likely due to autism and possibly not an indication of his guilt.
Originally, Roberson was slated to be executed on June 21, 2016, after he exhausted all his appeals against the death sentence; however, four days before the execution date, Roberson was granted a stay of execution and a court hearing was convened to review his case. The main point of the hearing was to determine whether Roberson's conviction should stand in light of the discredited theory of shaken baby syndrome, and there were past cases of individuals whose murder convictions based on shaken baby syndrome were overturned by the courts under a new law which mainly target cases of convictions based on junk science. The evidentiary hearing came to an end on March 19, 2021.
On January 11, 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided that there was insufficient basis for the court to intervene in Roberson's case after they found that the doubt surrounding the death of Nikki and purported concerns with theory of shaken baby syndrome was not enough to bring Roberson off death row or revoke his conviction for murder. Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court also rejected another appeal from Roberson on October 2, 2023.

## 2024 execution stay

On July 1, 2024, the trial court in Anderson County approved a death warrant for Roberson, and his execution was scheduled for October 17, 2024. Roberson was reportedly the first death row prisoner convicted on the grounds of "shaken baby syndrome" to have an execution date scheduled in the United States.
When the scheduling of Roberson's execution was publicized, his case was heavily debated over whether his murder conviction and death sentence should stand in light of criticisms of "shaken baby syndrome", and the lingering concerns of Roberson's alleged innocence were heightened after the announcement of his execution date.
In a final series of legal attempts to escape the death penalty, Roberson and his lawyers appealed to the state courts to overturn his conviction and sentence, stating that he was innocent and never killed Nikki. Roberson also brought up his undiagnosed autism to seek mercy and argued that it had hindered him from having a fair trial. An appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was rejected on September 11, 2024.
There was considerable support coming from lawmakers and law enforcement personnel to stave off Roberson's execution. Reverend Brian Wharton, a former police officer who investigated Roberson's case and whose testimony helped send Roberson to death row, advocated for the commutation of Roberson's death sentence, stating he believed at this stage that the conviction or sentence should not have happened if there were proper investigations made in the case, especially since Roberson's autism went undiagnosed.
A clemency petition signed by 84 lawmakers from the 150-member state House, bestselling novelist John Grisham, medical experts, death penalty attorneys and former detectives of the case was submitted to the state Pardons Board for the commutation of Roberson's death sentence to life without parole. One of these supporters, John Grisham, cited his reason behind his support for clemency, stating that no crime had taken place to begin with and that Texas was about to execute an innocent man. Under Texas state law, the final recourse for inmates awaiting their scheduled execution was to appeal for clemency and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles would decide whether to recommend clemency, with the governor having the final say, although it was noted that the governor Greg Abbott had rarely granted clemency throughout his tenure. Two weeks before he was to be executed, Roberson also made a personal plea to the governor to spare his life.
On October 8, 2024, Roberson was granted a new hearing of his appeal against the death sentence but on October 11, 2024, Roberson's appeal was dismissed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
On October 15, 2024, Administrative Judge Alfonso Charles, who was the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region presiding judge, rejected the appeal of Roberson to vacate his death warrant. On that same date, the Texas Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence approved a subpoena to allow Roberson to testify before a Texas House committee in relation to his case.
On October 16, 2024, the Texas parole board voted unanimously, 6–0, against recommending Roberson's sentence be commuted or his execution delayed. Abbott can only grant a pardon at the parole board's recommendation; the only remaining path to prevent Roberson's execution would be if Abbott awarded a 30-day reprieve to allow litigation to continue, and Abbott expressed no intention to do so. Roberson's counsel urged the governor to grant him a reprieve to allow them more time to prepare their case for continuing to fight for Roberson's life.
Simultaneously, as a last resort to evade the death penalty, Roberson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Texas Attorney General's office had responded that Roberson had failed to prove his innocence and it had been upheld by multiple court proceedings that the cause of Nikki Curtis's death was "inconsistent with a short fall from a bed or complications from a virus". The U.S. Supreme Court rejected this final appeal hours before the scheduled timing of Roberson's execution.
Roberson was slated to be put to death via lethal injection at 6:00 pm CDT on October 17 in the Huntsville Unit. However, a Travis County judge issued an order to temporarily block the execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals subsequently overturned the stay after the prosecution appealed and ordered the execution to move forward. However, the Supreme Court of Texas intervened and temporarily halted the execution after Roberson's attorney and state lawmakers filed a last second appeal for a stay.
Roberson was scheduled to testify before the House committee on October 21, 2024, where the lawmakers were to consider his testimony when determining whether amendments should be made to Texas law governing "junk science". However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton barred Roberson from appearing in-person to testify, saying it wouldn't be safe to bring a death row inmate to the Capitol.
On November 15, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that state lawmakers had "exceeded their power" when they called on Roberson to testify before a House committee. A new execution date can be set, but the court also said lawmakers could still call Roberson to testify, and that the executive branch would have to accommodate such a request.
On December 2, 2024, the judge who signed Roberson's death warrant, Judge Deborah Oakes Evans, voluntarily recused herself from the case.

## Current status

As of October 17, 2024, Robert Roberson remains on death row for the murder of his daughter. A new execution date has yet to be set.