HUNTSVILLE — The Texas Supreme Court halted the scheduled execution of Robert Roberson late Thursday night, hours before he was poised to become the first person in the U.S. executed for a murder conviction linked to shaken baby syndrome.
Roberson's lawyers and state lawmakers filed a last-second civil appeal with the Texas Supreme Court late Thursday night for a stay of execution, which it granted.
"The vast team fighting for Robert Roberson--people all across Texas, the country, and the world--are elated tonight that a contingent of brave, bipartisan Texas lawmakers chose to dig deep into the facts of Robert's case that no court had yet considered and recognized that his life was worth fighting for," said Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson's lawyers. "He lives to fight another day and hopes that his experience can help improve the integrity of our criminal legal system."
That ruling came after a rollercoaster legal ordeal in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals earlier Thursday night denied a motion for a stay of execution, reversing a temporary order granted by Travis County Judge Jessica Mangrum. That state appeals court ruling was in response to an appeal from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of Mangrum's ruling.
In an effort to delay the execution, Roberson was subpoenaed Wednesday night by a bipartisan group of Texas state lawmakers on the state House Criminal Justice Committee after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier in the day denied Roberson's request for clemency.
"The underlying criminal-law matter is within the Court of Criminal Appeals' authority, but the relief sought here is civil in nature, as are the claims that have been presented to the district court," Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan Young wrote in his opinion. "Whether the legislature may use its authority to compel the attendance of witnesses to block the executive branch's authority to enforce a sentence of death is a question of Texas civil law, not its criminal law."
The execution warrant expires at midnight. A state prison spokesperson previously said staff and guards were in place and ready if all of Roberson's appeals had been exhausted.
Protesters outside the execution site in Huntsville
Jay Johnson/CBS News Texas
The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday evening also denied a request to stay the execution, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing in her ruling that the "Supreme Court is powerless to act without a colorable federal claim, and because the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency, only one remedy remains: an executive grant of a reprieve delaying Roberson's execution by thirty days."
Such a reprieve would need to come from Gov. Greg Abbott.
"An executive reprieve of thirty days would provide the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles with an opportunity to reconsider the evidence of Roberson's actual innocence," Sotomayor wrote. "That could prevent a miscarriage of justice from occurring: executing a man who has raised credible evidence of actual innocence."
Mangrum's restraining order came after Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena to 57-year-old Roberson Wednesday night in a last-minute legal effort to stop his execution, which would be the first in the country connected to a shaken baby syndrome diagnosis. Roberson had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. Central Time Thursday for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine.
"This is an extraordinary remedy," Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano said during arguments Thursday. "But it is not undue."
Republicans and Democrats on the House Criminal Justice Committee believe Roberson deserves a new trial based on the medical theory that the death of his chronically ill daughter was caused by violent shaking, known as shaken baby syndrome, which has been widely dismissed by many experts as junk science.
Leach said over 80 legislators signed a letter "calling for the pause button into Roberson's execution," believing his testimony is vitally necessary.
"We have been joined by people from the far left of the Texas House to people on the far extreme right - people we have had hard times working together with other issues," state Rep. John Bucy (D-Williamson County) said in Huntsville Thursday. "We've come together because people in the House that have looked at this closely and looked at the evidence know that Robert Roberson is an innocent man and this execution should not move forward."
Over the last two days, Roberson's attorney with The Innocence Project expressed confidence that his life would be spared.
"We asked the Supreme Court to stop Texas from committing a devastating, irreparable mistake because Robert Roberson has not received due process," Roberson's attorney Gretchen Sween said in response to the decision from SCOTUS. "Yesterday, the Texas House of Representatives heard a full day of testimony documenting the failure of that process. No one who heard that testimony could be left with any doubt that Robert is completely innocent and never received a fair process."
Roberson's lawyers and supporters don't deny that head and other injuries from child abuse are real, claiming doctors misdiagnosed Curtis' injuries as being related to shaken baby syndrome. They also claim that Roberson's conviction was based on faulty and now outdated scientific evidence related to shaken baby syndrome.
The diagnosis 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.
His supporters said new evidence has shown the girl died not from abuse but from complications related to severe pneumonia.
Those protesting Thursday's scheduled execution included the police detective who helped send Roberson to death row, Brian Wharton.
"Let me just say, Robert is an innocent man," said Wharton. "But more than that, he is a kind man. He is a gentle man. He is a gracious man."
The American Academy of Pediatrics, other medical organizations and prosecutors say the diagnosis is valid and that doctors look at all possible things, including any illnesses, when determining if injuries were attributable to shaken baby syndrome.
The Anderson County District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted Roberson, has said in court documents that after a 2022 hearing to consider the new evidence in the case, a judge rejected the theories that pneumonia and other diseases caused Curtis' death.
Prosecutors maintain Roberson's new evidence does not disprove their case that Curtis died from injuries inflicted by her father.
What courts have said about shaken baby syndrome
In recent years, courts around the country have overturned convictions or dropped charges centered on shaken baby syndrome, including in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan.
In a ruling last week in a different shaken baby syndrome case out of Dallas County, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial after finding scientific advancements related to the diagnosis would now likely result in an acquittal in that case.
But the appeals court has repeatedly denied Roberson's request to stay his execution, most recently last week.
In the U.S., at least eight individuals have been sentenced to death because of shaken baby syndrome, said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Two of these eight have been exonerated and Roberson is the only one to have received execution dates.
"According to the National Registry of Exonerations, at least 30 people across the country have been exonerated based on this discredited scientific theory," Maher said.
But Danielle Vazquez, executive director of the Utah-based National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, said a 2021 research article found that 97% of more than 1,400 convictions related to shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma from 2008 to 2018 were upheld and that such convictions were rarely overturned on the grounds of medical evidence.
