Robert Roberson was supposed to be executed on Oct 17. The East Texas man convicted of the 2002 shaken baby syndrome murder of his two-year-old daughter Nikki did not find relief from the courts or from Governor Greg Abbott. This is despite overwhelming evidence of innocence and overwhelming outcries from the public.
The media and anti-death penalty protestors gathered that night outside of the Walls Unit in Huntsville where executions are carried out.
At 6 p.m., the scheduled time of death came and went, and Roberson still lived. There was a legal battle playing out over his fate. Standing in the way of the executioner was a subpoena from the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence which called for Roberson to testify days later. In an appeal brought by the Attorney General’s office the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled to ignore that subpoena and to proceed with the lethal injection. However, four hours after the death time and two hours before the death warrant expired the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the subpoena was valid, and the execution was halted.
Now the Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is looking to reset the public narrative about Roberson and erase the actual facts of the case, what happened to Baby Nikki, the trial record and Roberson’s own personal history. Paxton is seeking to rebrand Roberson as a violent man who beat Nikki to death and his trial had nothing to do with shaken baby syndrome.
The AG Office issued a report to the public that claimed it was “setting the record straight.” In actuality the AG release is doing just the opposite.
The biggest lie in the AG report is that Nikki didn’t die from shaken baby syndrome but from blunt force trauma.
However, at the Oct. 21 House hearing on Roberson, Terre Compton, a juror in Roberson’s original trial, testified that the case was tried entirely as a shaken baby case.
“Everything that was presented to us was all about shaken baby syndrome. That is what our decision was based on,” Compton testified.
State Representative Brian Harrison asked Compton “Were you told anything about this little girl, Nikki, being beaten.”
“No” was her answer.
Both Roberson’s attorneys and the members of the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence have released detailed rebuttals to Paxton's report.
I spoke to Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween about her response to Paxton.
“They (the AG Office) spin this yarn about this fictional record they wish existed at the same time saying, “Don’t look at the real record” by trying to suggest this wasn’t even a shaken baby case,” Sween said.
Sween said there were very few signs of external injury, which is why Roberson was charged with shaken baby syndrome.
“That one would create a lurid fiction to try to detract from this noble work these lawmakers are doing to try to get at the truth, I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” she said.
Sween called the AG Office release a “dirty trick” and said every Texan should be concerned that the AG Office would produce this document where “almost every sentence in it is a misrepresentation.”
Roberson was scheduled to be executed on Oct. 17, but he was saved by a subpoena by the state legislature investigating flaws in Texas penalty appeals. Multiple independent experts have examined the court and medical records. They concluded Roberson is likely innocent and deserves a new trial.
