Time is running out for Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson, an East Texas man that experts say is likely innocent.
Roberson was convicted of murdering his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, with shaken baby syndrome. However, new research shows that she died from pneumonia and a chronic health condition.
Attorneys for Robert Roberson were seeking to vacate his execution warrant by removing the judge in his case they say is biased and was improperly assigned to this case. That motion was rejected Tuesday.
On Wednesday one of Roberson’s attorneys, Gretchen Sween, urged Governor Greg Abbott to grant a reprieve of 30 days to allow litigation to continue and to allow time for a court to hear the medical and scientific evidence that could show that Roberson’s two-year-old daughter, Nikki, died of natural and accidental causes and not of abuse at the hands of her father.
Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Policy Project has said that if he is executed, Roberson would be the first person in the U.S. to be executed based on the shaken baby diagnosis. Dunham has expressed that the death penalty more generally has no place in the justice system and believes that this particular case that leans into describing shaken baby syndrome as “junk science” corroborates this assertion.
In one case Dunham has cited, a Mississippi man on death row for a shaken baby diagnosis was resentenced to life in prison in 2018 after evidence was re-examined.
Guest:
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, an independent research program, and special counsel at the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black.
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This interview will be recorded on Wednesday, October 16, 2024.
