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A bipartisan majority of the Texas House urged the state on Tuesday to grant clemency to a man who was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, but who has consistently maintained his innocence and argued that his conviction was based on an unsound shaken baby syndrome diagnosis.
One month out from Robert Roberson’s execution, 86 lawmakers signed a letter pressing the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend clemency, which would be up to Gov. Greg Abbott to grant. The board can take up until two days before the execution, which is slated for Oct. 17, to make its recommendation.
The lawmakers, who comprise just under a supermajority of the Texas House, cited “voluminous new scientific evidence” that they and Roberson’s attorneys argued demonstrates his innocence and explains that the cause of his daughter’s death was natural and accidental.
“It should shock all Texans that we are barreling towards an execution in the face of this new evidence,” the lawmakers wrote to the board. “Other states look to Texas as a leader for both enforcing the rule of law and addressing wrongful convictions. We now look to you to prevent our state from tarnishing that reputation by allowing this execution to proceed.”
Roberson has maintained his innocence while being held on death row for more than 20 years. The Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended clemency in just two capital cases out of the 85 applications it considered over the past decade.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals previously halted Roberson’s execution in 2016. But in 2023, the state’s highest criminal court decided that doubt over the cause of his daughter’s death was not enough to overturn his death sentence, and Roberson’s new execution date, Oct. 17, was set in July. Then, without reviewing the merits of his claims, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week dismissed both a motion to halt the execution and a final application for relief filed by Roberson’s attorneys.
Roberson was convicted in 2003 of killing his severely ill 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. Roberson had rushed her limp, blue body to the hospital after waking to find her unconscious and fallen from the bed in their Palestine home in East Texas. But doctors and nurses, who were unable to revive her, did not believe such a low fall could have caused the fatal injuries and suspected child abuse.
At trial, doctors testified that Nikki’s death was consistent with shaken baby syndrome — in which an infant is severely injured from being shaken violently back and forth — and a jury convicted Roberson.
The Court of Criminal Appeals stopped Roberson’s execution in 2016 and sent the case back to the trial court after the scientific consensus around shaken baby diagnoses cracked. While medical professionals were trained at the time of Nikki’s death to presume abuse when infants presented certain internal head injuries, Roberson’s attorneys argued that those symptoms have now been linked to various naturally occurring illnesses and accidents.
