EXCLUSIVE: A Texas demise row inmate is scheduled to be executed subsequent week for his conviction of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, however his lawyer argues that not solely is her consumer harmless, no one is answerable for the little lady’s demise.
Robert Roberson is scheduled to be executed by deadly injection on Oct. 17. Prosecutors mentioned his daughter, Nikki Curtis, was killed after sustaining accidents brought on by being violently shaken, often called shaken child syndrome. Roberson could be the primary particular person within the U.S. to be executed based mostly on shaken child syndrome.
Greater than 80 Texas state lawmakers, in addition to the detective who helped the prosecution, medical consultants, parental rights teams, human rights teams, bestselling novelist John Grisham and different advocates have referred to as for the state to grant Roberson clemency over the idea that he’s harmless. A gaggle of state lawmakers even visited him in jail to encourage him.
In an unique interview with Fox Information Digital, his longtime lawyer, Gretchen Sween, says shaken child syndrome has been debunked and that Nikki’s precise reason for demise has been revealed to be from different well being points reminiscent of pneumonia, which is a lung an infection.
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Robert Roberson is scheduled to be executed by deadly injection on Oct. 17. (Roberson Household)
Roberson, who has maintained his innocence, took his daughter to the hospital in 2002 after he awakened and located her unconscious with blue lips. Docs on the time have been skeptical of Roberson’s declare that his daughter had fallen up and about whereas they have been sleeping, with some testifying at trial that her signs have been in line with the indicators of shaken child syndrome.
“I consider he’s harmless for 2 distinct causes,” Sween informed Fox Information Digital. “The speculation that there was against the law that was used to convict him, which was then often called the shaken child syndrome speculation, has been completely discredited. There is no such thing as a one now who would say the model of that speculation that was put earlier than his jury as if it have been scientific reality is authentic.”
“Additionally, I do know from the consultants that had dug into his daughter’s medical data and examined the proof that this exceedingly sick baby died from undiagnosed pneumonia that was [ravaging] her lungs, mixed with very harmful prescription drugs she was given in the previous few days of her life,” she continued. “And it is to not recommend that docs did this deliberately. It is simply they did not know in regards to the pneumonia.”
The docs, she says, noticed Nikki’s signs and believed they steered a chilly or flu, they usually gave her an antihistamine and codeine, drugs that suppress respiratory.
“Pneumonia is a illness of the lungs,” Sween mentioned. “You might have this baby struggling to breathe given these drugs, and she or he collapses and ceases respiratory within the evening. We now know what occurred to this baby, and we all know what the state mentioned occurred 20-something years in the past is simply not true.”
Many medical professionals, together with these from Stanford College Medical Middle, College of Pennsylvania and Kids’s Minnesota Hospital, now say that docs diagnose shaken child syndrome too quickly earlier than considering a baby’s medical historical past.
Sween mentioned it’s “maddening” that there’s what she believes is “overwhelming” and “compelling” proof that the courts have but to look at.
The Texas Courtroom of Felony Appeals beforehand halted his execution in 2016. Nonetheless, final yr the court docket allowed the case to renew, and a brand new date was set to hold out Roberson’s demise.
On Monday, Roberson’s legal professionals requested a Texas court docket to remain his execution and rethink his innocence based mostly on new scientific proof. His legal professionals additionally urged the court docket to rethink its earlier denial of habeas reduction based mostly on new proof that additional reveals how a groundbreaking state regulation designed to forestall wrongful convictions was not utilized as supposed in his case.
Sween says she is going to make each enchantment she is aware of to make to assist spare her consumer’s life, as much as and together with the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.
Texas regulation permits the governor to grant a one-time, 30-day reprieve from execution. However full clemency requires a advice from nearly all of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is appointed by the governor.
Robert Roberson III was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002. (Texas Division of Felony Justice through AP)
Since GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was sworn into workplace in 2015, he has granted clemency in just one demise row case, when he commuted Thomas Whitaker’s demise sentence to life in jail an hour earlier than his scheduled execution in 2018. Whitaker had been convicted of arranging a plot that left his mom and brother fatally shot and his father wounded.
However Sween says Roberson’s case is totally different from earlier demise penalty instances as a result of it’s an “precise innocence case,” the place not solely was Roberson wrongly accused, however there was no crime in any respect.
“If that does not advantage a use of government energy, I do not know what does,” Sween mentioned.
Abbott’s workplace and the Board of Pardons and Paroles didn’t reply to Fox Information Digitals’ requests for remark.
Prosecutors preserve that the proof towards Roberson stays sound and that the science of shaken child syndrome has not modified as a lot as his protection argues.
“That is simply not defensible,” Sween mentioned of prosecutors’ claims the science has not modified. She additionally famous that the American Academy for Pediatrics, which she says is answerable for the shaken child syndrome changing into extensively recognized, states in its present consensus assertion that abuse should not be recognized till each different attainable reason for the identical circumstances is eradicated.
She additionally mentioned there isn’t any proof that shaking induced Nikki’s signs and cited a number of research exhibiting that there are a number of different attainable explanations for the kid’s demise. She additionally pointed to research exhibiting that there has by no means been a case the place shaking could cause inner bleeding exterior the mind or a mind damage.
Sween additionally identified that Nikki, at2-years-old, was not a child and the anatomy of a 2-year-old is totally different from that of a child.
Shaken child syndrome was theorized years in the past as a attainable clarification for mysterious deaths of infants who suffered inner head circumstances, subdural bleeding, mind swelling and generally retinal hemorrhages. However Sween says the speculation was by no means examined and was nonetheless handled as established reality.
“Now we all know all these medical circumstances could cause the identical signs,” she mentioned. “So how will you say abuse might be recognized when one thing like pneumonia could cause the identical inner situation? So, I believe respectfully, the state is just mistaken on this.”
Sween additionally cited an identical case in a distinct a part of Texas that was tried a few years earlier than Roberson’s. In that case in Dallas, which featured the identical baby abuse knowledgeable that was utilized in Roberson’s case in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors representing the state conceded the science has modified and agreed that that man deserves a brand new trial.
Roberson’s attorneys have additionally argued that his demeanor was wrongfully used towards him, as he’s autistic. He didn’t appear to be a distraught mum or dad, which Sween says might be attributed to his autism.
“This began when he introduced his baby to the hospital,” Sween mentioned. “She was comatose. He did not know methods to clarify her situation. His demeanor, from the outset, was judged as simply odd, off, bizarre. There are all these judgments made that then grew to become a part of the trial testimony. A number of witnesses informed the jury that this was a purpose to suspect him, his off demeanor. Now, after all, none of those docs or nurses or regulation enforcement knew that Robert had autism.”
A part of autism, Sween says, is that an individual could typically shut down once they have a disaster of emotion and don’t present the feelings they really feel on the within. She mentioned this was the case with Roberson, who was not recognized with autism till 2018.
“And that was his situation, and it stayed, however there are even references to this in his data approach earlier than this occurred with Nikki,” she mentioned. “However he’d by no means been correctly recognized. He’d been, you realize, a particular wants child, poor child, residing on the sting of city, obtained some assist by Medicaid, was put in particular ed lessons, however he was by no means given an intensive analysis, a workup to determine what was happening.”
Roberson mentioned the outpouring of assist from numerous folks and teams who consider he’s harmless has made a distinction to him, in keeping with Sween, who mentioned he had not felt “as human,” as he described, in a very long time as he did when state lawmakers visited him and expressed solidarity with him.
Texas Senate Invoice 1578, enacted in 2021, permits mother and father accused of kid abuse by a medical skilled to hunt a second medical opinion from an impartial physician who specializes within the kid’s particular medical situation. However Roberson didn’t profit from this regulation, because it got here almost 20 years after his conviction.
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Since GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was sworn into workplace in 2015, he has granted clemency in just one demise row case. (AP Picture/Sue Ogrocki, File)
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Sween additionally mentioned Roberson’s case ought to increase issues about capital punishment, even amongst individuals who assist the demise penalty, given the “actually irrefutable proof from consultants with a long time of expertise mentioning the pneumonia on this kid’s lungs.”
“If no court docket can hear that, and that may be a purpose then to kill any person, I believe it turns into laborious to really feel assured that Texas does not regularly danger executing the harmless,” she mentioned. “And I do not know of anybody who would take the ethical place that executing folks for crimes that didn’t happen is someway authentic.”
As for Roberson’s mindset forward of his scheduled execution, Sween mentioned he appears to be fluctuating between being scared and being joyful that individuals are involved in regards to the case.
“Each time he learns there are new folks that care in regards to the case, he will get this kind of childlike enthusiasm and feels hopeful once more,” she mentioned. “So it is a sort of byproduct of his incapacity. And one of many issues that I believe helps him is that in case you inform him, you realize, we nonetheless have issues to attempt to do, then he will get optimistic once more. So he does not go into advanced philosophical enthusiastic about this. He simply does not perceive why he hasn’t already gone dwelling.”
