Father remains hopeful as execution date in ‘shaken baby’ case nears

Robert Roberson hopes he can again avoid becoming the first person in the U.S. executed for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

With days to go before his scheduled October 16 execution, Roberson maintained his innocence in the 2002 death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. He is set to die by lethal injection nearly a year to the day after a group of Texas lawmakers, who say he is innocent, secured an extraordinary last-minute court reprieve as Roberson waited outside the death chamber in Huntsville.

Roberson said he was placing his hopes for another execution stay in the hands of his lawyers, his supporters and God.

“I’m not going to stress out and stuff because I know God has it, you know. He’s in control. No matter what, God’s in control, you know, and he does have the last say, you know,” Roberson, 58, said last week as he sat behind a glass partition in the visiting area of the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where Texas’ male death row inmates are housed.

During an hour-long interview, Roberson said he thinks about his daughter every day and what kind of life she would have today.

Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued he hit his daughter and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma and that she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome.

Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.

The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s attorneys have argued his undiagnosed autism helped convict him, as authorities and medical personnel felt he didn’t act like a concerned parent because his flat affect was seen as a sign of guilt.

Last year, Roberson was on the verge of being put to death when a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering on the night of his scheduled execution, including an unprecedented intervention by a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, stayed his lethal injection. In July, a judge set the new execution date, Roberson’s third.

During this interview, Roberson often would not keep eye contact and would repeat words or phrases — behaviors that experts say are associated with autism.

“They assumed (guilt) because of the way I was acting, you know. And I didn’t know I was autistic, you know, until years and years later, you know,” said Roberson, who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until 2018.

Roberson’s supporters and his legal team are again holding rallies and asking state and federal appeals courts and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to halt his execution. His supporters include both liberal and ultraconservative lawmakers, Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, bestselling author John Grisham and Brian Wharton, the former police detective who helped put together the case against him.

“The whole world is watching. Texas, do not kill this innocent man,” Wharton said during a rally Saturday outside the Texas Capitol building in Austin.

• For more: Elrisala website and for social networking, you can follow us on Facebook
• Source of information and images “independent”“