Texas court sets execution for man in controversial shaken baby syndrome case

July 2 (UPI) -- A Texas court has set an October execution date for Robert Roberson, a death row inmate who for decades has proclaimed his innocence in the death of his 2-year-old daughter and whose sentence has been criticized by justice advocates and his lawyers as being based on debunked science.

The 3rd Judicial District Court in Anderson County on Monday set Roberson's execution date for Oct. 17, according to the order obtained by UPI via the Innocence Project.

He is to die by lethal injection anytime after 6 p.m. at the Correctional Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville.

The order was at the request of Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, who filed a motion asking the court to set a date two weeks ago.

Roberson, 57, has for years maintained his innocence in the death of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, who died in early 2002.

She had been brought in a comatose state to the emergency room Jan. 31 of that year by Roberson after she fell out of her bed sick with a high fever.

Roberson was arrested on allegations of killing Curtis by shaking her and hitting her head.

He was then tried on charges of capital murder, convicted and sentenced to death in February 2003.

In 2016, a week before Roberson's sentence was originally to be scheduled, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted his execution over questions about the science of so-called shaken baby syndrome, which supported his conviction, and sent the case back to trial.

But in 2023, the state's court of criminal appeals ruled that skepticism of the science did not meet the threshold to overturn his sentence.

Roberson's lawyers state in their filing opposing Mitchell's request to set an execution date that evidence developed since 2021 shows Curtis died of "natural and accidental causes," including severe undiagnosed pneumonia, which resulted in her to cease breathing, collapse and turn blue before being discovered unconscious by her father the night before her death.

His lawyers in the opposition filing say that she was days prior to her death prescribed "dangerous medicines, no longer given to children her age," to treat symptoms of her undiagnosed pneumonia that only further suppressed her breathing.

"This unfortunate set of circumstances explains why, less than two days later, she ceased breathing -- never to be revived because she had already sustained brain death," the lawyers said in the June 18 filing.

They contend some of the symptoms that the prosecution used during the trial in support of their claims of shaken baby syndrome and head trauma were caused by her heart being resuscitated after her brain was already dead.

"Because her brain was dead, after her heart was resuscitated, oxygen was racing toward the brain, but could not enter it. Subdural blood accumulated inside her head, outside of her brain -- a fact misinterpreted as a sign of head trauma," they said.

They also point to Roberson's undiagnosed autism as being a factor in his inability to properly convey the situation to doctors who at the time Curtis was brought to the hospital thought of him as odd and seeming to lack emotion about his daughter's situation.

"There was a tragic, untimely death of a sick child whose impaired, impoverished father did not know how to explain what has confounded the medical community for decades," his lawyers said.

According to the nonprofit Innocence Project legal organization, each shaken baby syndrome case that was considered medical orthodoxy at the time of Roberson's trial has since been undermined by science.

"In other words, none of these SBS principles were grounded in science and, long after Mr. Roberson's trial, each has been debunked," it said in a statement .

The National Registry of Exonerations states that since 1992, defendants convicted in 33 shaken baby syndrome cases have been exonerated.

"When a child dies, there's often a rush to judgment," Gretchen Sims Sween, one of Roberson's attorneys, said in a statement, referring to the more than 30 exonerations.

"The courts or Gov. [Greg] Abbott must intervene to prevent an irreversible tragedy from coming to pass."

Along with his attorneys and justice advocates, the lead detective in Roberson's case is vouching for his innocence.

"For over 20 years, I have thought that something went very wrong in Mr. Roberson's case and feared that justice was not served," Brian Wharton, the former assistant chief of the Palestine Police Department who led Roberson's case, said in a statement.

"I have come to believe that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes and that there was no crime.

"I am convinced Mr. Roberson is innocent."

The Innocence Project said that Roberson still has litigation pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to re-evaluate evidence based on another case where the state conceded the defendant should be retried due to changes to the scientific understanding of shaken baby syndrome.