Texas Department of Corrections
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Robert Roberson, set to be executed next week for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, was granted a stay of execution Thursday, according to The Dallas Morning News.
The decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the latest development in a busy timeline that has seen Roberson’s case garner increasing national attention over the past year, dating back to before Roberson’s last scheduled execution date in 2024.
Since his 2003 conviction, Roberson has maintained his innocence, with advocates suggesting that the prosecution’s evidence that his daughter Nikki died of “shaken baby syndrome” was based on what has been deemed as “junk science” for years, while other convictions related to the diagnosis have been overturned. Attorneys for Roberson argue that Nikki died of natural causes, including pneumonia, after falling off a bed.
Thursday’s stay of execution comes much sooner before Roberson’s set execution date than it did last year, when a unique scenario, including a Texas House subpoena, prevented Roberson from being put to death mere hours before he was scheduled to die. Since then, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been vocal in his determination to not only keep Roberson from appearing before the bipartisan House committee investigating his case, but to see that Roberson is eventually killed.
Texas House Rep. Brian Harrison, who sits on the committee that subpoenaed Roberson, expressed his approval of the court’s decision.
“I applaud in the strongest possible terms today’s correct decision by conservative Judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals to stay Robert Roberson’s execution,” Harrison said in a portion of a statement provided to the media. “These brave Judges took their duty to seek justice seriously, even in the face of tremendous and dishonest political pressure to execute a potentially innocent person, who has never been given a fair trial. It is most incumbent on those of us who support capital punishment to ensure that potentially innocent people are never subjected to it.”
In June, Paxton’s office requested Roberson’s execution date be set for October. Although a judge publicly questioned the need for the move in July, the Oct. 16 date was set, despite a pending petition supporting Roberson’s claim of innocence.
The state has not announced whether it will appeal the decision. According to the Morning News report, “the next step will likely be seeking relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, which also declined to intervene last year.”
