A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers on Tuesday called on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop the execution of a man convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter in 2002.
Robert Roberson is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Oct. 17. Prosecutors claimed his daughter, Nikki Curtis, was killed after sustaining injuries caused by being violently shaken.
The petition from 84 lawmakers from the 150-member state House as well as medical experts, death penalty attorneys, a former detective on the case and bestselling novelist John Grisham argue that the case was built on faulty scientific evidence in a rare showing of widespread bipartisan support in the Lone Star State against a planned execution, according to The Associated Press.
“There is a strong majority, a bipartisan majority, of the Texas House that have serious doubts about Robert Roberson’s execution,” Democrat Rep. Joe Moody said at a press conference at the state Capitol. “This is one of those issues that is life and death, and our political ideology doesn’t come into play here.”
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Texas law allows the governor to grant a one-time, 30-day reprieve from execution. But full clemency requires a recommendation from the majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is appointed by the governor.
Since Abbott was sworn into office in 2015, he has granted clemency in only one death row case, when he commuted Thomas Whitaker’s death sentence to life in prison an hour before his scheduled execution in 2018. Whitaker had been convicted of arranging a plot that left his mother and brother fatally shot and his father wounded.
The lawmakers’ petition argues Roberson’s conviction was based on inaccurate scientific evidence and emphasizes that experts have largely debunked allegations that Nikki’s symptoms were consistent with shaken baby syndrome.
“Nikki’s death … was not a crime — unless it is a crime for a parent to be unable to explain complex medical problems that even trained medical professionals failed to understand at the time,” the petition reads. “We know that Nikki’s lungs were severely infected and straining for oxygen — for days or even weeks before her collapse.”
Roberson, who has maintained his innocence, took his daughter to the hospital in 2002 after he woke up and found her unconscious with blue on her lips. Doctors at the time were skeptical of Roberson’s claim that his daughter had fallen off the bed while they were sleeping, with some testifying at trial that her symptoms were consistent with the signs of shaken baby syndrome.
Many medical professionals now say that doctors diagnose shaken baby syndrome too soon before taking into account a child’s medical history.
The medical experts who signed on to the petition include those from Stanford University Medical Center, the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Minnesota Hospital.
Roberson’s attorneys said his demeanor was wrongfully used against him, as he is autistic, and that doctors failed to rule out other medical explanations for the infant’s symptoms, including pneumonia.
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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals previously halted his execution in 2016. However, last year the court allowed the case to resume, and a new date was set to carry out Roberson’s death.
Prosecutors maintain that the evidence against Roberson remains sound and that the science of shaken baby syndrome has not changed as much as the defense argued.
Brian Wharton, a former chief of detectives in Palestine, Texas, who helped in Roberson’s prosecution, signed the petition and publicly demanded that the state halt the execution.
“Knowing everything I know now, I am firmly convinced that Robert is innocent,” Wharton said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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