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East Texas man convicted in controversial ‘shaken baby syndrome’ case gets execution date

Robert Roberson III is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Oct. 17, 2024, in Huntsville.

An execution date has been set for an East Texas man at the center of a controversial “shaken baby syndrome” case, despite some declaring his innocence — including the detective who led the investigation.

Robert Roberson III, 57, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Oct. 17 in Huntsville. The former Palestine construction worker was convicted of capital murder in 2003 for reportedly shaking his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, to death. He was previously scheduled to be executed in 2016, but the date was stayed after his lawyers argued the conviction was based on “junk science” and “false, misleading and scientifically invalid testimony.”

“When a child dies, there’s often a rush to judgment,” Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s attorneys, said in a written statement. “Since 2003, each of the shaken baby syndrome premises used to convict and sentence Robert Roberson to death has been debunked by evidence-based science.

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“The courts or Governor Abbott must intervene to prevent an irreversible tragedy from coming to pass.”

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Shaken baby syndrome, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a serious brain injury resulting from forcefully shaking an infant or toddler, destroying brain cells and preventing them from getting enough oxygen.

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When Nikki, who was chronically ill, died Feb. 1, 2002, a medical examiner ruled the cause to be blunt-force head injuries. Roberson, who had become Nikki’s sole caretaker for the first time the day before, said she accidentally fell from a bed, but medical staff at a Palestine hospital called police because they considered the injuries suspicious.

Physicians who examined the child said bruises to her chin, cheek and jaw and a subdural hematoma — bleeding outside her brain but inside her skull — likely were intentional.

Defense attorney Benjamin Wolff later argued Nikki’s death could be attributed to a number of things, such as undiagnosed meningitis, an accidental injury before Roberson began caring for her, a fall from the bed he didn’t see or a fatal congenital condition.

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Patrick Barnes, professor emeritus at Stanford University, wrote last year for Bloomberg Law that when Roberson was tried in 2003, a majority of shaken baby syndrome diagnoses were based on a triad of symptoms observed in Nikki, including bleeding over the brain, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes.

Since Roberson’s trial, Barnes said research conducted by him and others has established the “triad is not presumptive proof of abuse.”

“We now know that many illnesses, like Nikki’s pneumonia, medical disorders, and accidents, including short falls like the one Nikki experienced, can cause the same constellation of symptoms,” Barnes wrote. “In Nikki’s case, the combination of her undiagnosed pneumonia, the medications she was prescribed, and her accidental fall fully explain her condition and death.”

In a May column penned for The Dallas Morning News, former Palestine detective Brian Wharton, whose testimony helped convict Roberson, said he now also believes that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes.

“For 20 years, I have thought that something went very wrong in Roberson’s case and feared that justice was not served,” Wharton wrote. “If there is no movement to correct this injustice, I fear myself and others will carry our guilt eternally.”

Records show Roberson has a pending request for a new trial with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The filing repeatedly references another case out of Dallas “in which the state conceded the falsity of identical expert testimony upon which the state relied to convict Mr. Roberson.”

“Before the State executes a man for a crime that did not occur, good cause exists for the Court to take this initiative — especially considering Texas’s commitment to elevating scientific accuracy over finality in the most serious criminal cases,” the filing said.

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The court declined last year to overturn Roberson’s death sentence. His lawyers had argued that new science contradicts the evidence used to convict him, which violated his right to a fair trial.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, more than 30 people who served time in prison after convictions involving shaken baby syndrome have been exonerated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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