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A Texas courtroom has issued a keep of execution for Robert Roberson, a person whose 2003 homicide conviction has raised critical questions concerning the validity of “shaken child syndrome” as a medical prognosis.
Thursday’s determination arrived with solely per week remaining till Roberson’s scheduled execution date on October 16.
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Roberson, a 58-year-old autistic man, was accused of getting killed his two-year-old daughter Nikki Michelle Curtis in January 2002, after he introduced her to a hospital emergency room unconscious.
He has maintained that Nikki had been sick and fell from her mattress in a single day. However prosecutors argued that her head trauma will need to have been brought on by “shaken child syndrome”, a prognosis popularised within the late Nineties as proof of bodily abuse in infants and toddlers.
However that prognosis has been more and more rejected, as medical doctors and medical researchers level out that the signs of “shaken child syndrome” — particularly, bleeding or swelling within the eyes or mind — will be brought on by different circumstances.
Roberson’s defence workforce has argued that Nikki suffered from continual pneumonia within the lead-up to her loss of life, and the drugs she was given, together with codeine, contributed to her loss of life.
In Thursday’s determination, the judges on the Texas Court docket of Prison Appeals agreed to pause his execution in mild of an analogous case being overturned in 2024.
Decide Bert Richardson contrasted the shifting nature of the medical analysis with the finality of execution in his concurring opinion.
“There’s a delicate steadiness and stress in our legal justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy based mostly on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Decide Richardson wrote.
“A loss of life sentence is clearly closing and, as soon as carried out, hindsight is ineffective. Thus, when transferring ahead in such a means, we should always require the best requirements of accuracy in order that we will act with a dependable diploma of certainty.”
However the courtroom restricted its judgement to reopening Roberson’s petition for habeas corpus, which questions the constitutionality of an individual’s imprisonment.
It declined to rethink Roberson’s case as an entire. That prompted a number of the judges on the courtroom to problem a partial dissent.
Decide David Schenck, as an illustration, argued that “a brand new trial is important and mandated by our Structure”, given the brand new proof that has emerged within the twenty years since Roberson was sentenced to loss of life.
“The deserves of Roberson’s claims and the cumulative impact of the proof Roberson presents — in his fifth utility in addition to his earlier and subsequent functions — could be extra correctly and extra swiftly assessed at this level by a jury in a brand new trial,” Schenck stated.
He added {that a} new trial would additionally provide the state of Texas “a chance to current this case on its deserves”.
Nonetheless, some judges on the panel stated they had been against reopening the case, arguing that the shift in medical consensus didn’t rule out an act of violence in Nikki’s loss of life.
“Arguably credible and dependable scientific proof nonetheless exists to counsel that shaking a toddler could cause critical damage or loss of life,” Decide Kevin Yeary wrote in his opinion.
This isn’t the primary time that Roberson’s case has been delayed. He has spent almost 23 years on loss of life row and was additionally slated to be executed a 12 months in the past, in October 2024.
However that execution date was scuttled in a unprecedented sequence of occasions. Along with his execution scheduled for October 17 of that 12 months, a bipartisan group of legislators within the Texas Home Committee on Prison Jurisprudence agreed to problem a subpoena for Roberson on October 21 — successfully organising a battle between the legislature’s will and the courtroom’s.
The subpoen sparked a courtroom case concerning the separation of powers in Texas: A witness couldn’t reply a legislative subpoena if the justice system executed him first.
Additional, the members of the Texas Home committee had argued {that a} 2013 state legislation barring using “junk science” in courtroom instances had didn’t be utilized in Roberson’s case.
The case reached the Texas Supreme Court docket, which halted Roberson’s execution whereas the matter was resolved. Execution dates are set with no less than 90 days’ discover in Texas, leading to a chronic pause.
On July 16, after appeals from Roberson’s defence workforce, a brand new execution date was set for this month.
Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton, a Republican, has accused critics of Roberson’s sentence of “interfering with the capital punishment proceedings” and has repeatedly pledged to push ahead with the execution.
However even these concerned in Roberson’s unique capital homicide trial have sought to see his sentence overturned.
Brian Wharton, the lead investigator in Roberson’s case, had as soon as testified in favour of the prosecution. However final 12 months, he advised the Texas Home committee that he supported Roberson’s attraction, given the brand new proof that has come to mild.
“He’s an harmless man, and we’re very near killing him for one thing he didn’t do,” Wharton stated.
On Thursday, one of many jurors who helped convict Roberson additionally printed an opinion column within the Houston Chronicle, asserting that she was “flawed” to aspect with the prosecution.
“If we on the jury knew then what I do know now — concerning the new proof of Nikki’s missed pneumonia, how her respiratory would have been affected by the Phenergan and codeine medical doctors gave her that final week, the indicators of sepsis, and all of the issues that had been flawed with the model of shaken child syndrome used within the case — we might have had much more to debate,” Terre Compton wrote.
“Based mostly on all that has come out because the trial, I’m 100% sure that Robert Roberson didn’t homicide his little one.”
Texas has executed 596 individuals since 1982, probably the most of any state.
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