A Texas court has issued a stay of execution for Robert Roberson, a man whose 2003 murder conviction has raised serious questions about the validity of “shaken baby syndrome” as a medical diagnosis.
Thursday’s decision arrived with only a week remaining until Roberson’s scheduled execution date on October 16.
Roberson, a 58-year-old autistic man, was accused of having killed his two-year-old daughter Nikki Michelle Curtis in January 2002, after he brought her to a hospital emergency room unconscious.
He has maintained that Nikki had been sick and fell from her bed overnight. But prosecutors argued that her head trauma must have been caused by “shaken baby syndrome”, a diagnosis popularised in the late 1990s as evidence of physical abuse in infants and toddlers.
But that diagnosis has been increasingly rejected, as doctors and medical researchers point out that the symptoms of “shaken baby syndrome” — namely, bleeding or swelling in the eyes or brain — can be caused by other conditions.
Roberson’s defence team has argued that Nikki suffered from chronic pneumonia in the lead-up to her death, and the medications she was given, including codeine, contributed to her death.
In Thursday’s decision, the judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to pause his execution in light of a similar case being overturned in 2024.
Judge Bert Richardson contrasted the shifting nature of the medical research with the finality of execution in his concurring opinion.
“There is a delicate balance and tension in our criminal justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy based on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Judge Richardson wrote.
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