What to Know About Robert Roberson Facing Execution on Oct. 17 in Texas for a Crime That Never Occurred

Texas Set Robert Roberson’s execution for Oct. 17, despite new evidence that he is an innocent man wrongly convicted under the now-debunked shaken baby syndrome hypothesis.

Urgent 06.18.24 By Innocence Staff

12/19/23, Livingston, Texas: Robert Roberson photographed through plexiglass at TDCJ Polunsky Unit. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Innocence Project

12/19/23, Livingston, Texas: Robert Roberson photographed through plexiglass at TDCJ Polunsky Unit. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Innocence Project

On July 1, Texas set Robert Roberson’s execution for Oct. 17, despite new evidence that he is an innocent man wrongly convicted under the now-debunked shaken baby syndrome (SBS) hypothesis. Mr. Roberson would be the first person in the U.S. executed based on the discredited SBS hypothesis unless the courts or Gov. Abbott intervenes.

Mr. Roberson’s case is riddled with unscientific evidence, inaccurate and misleading medical testimony, and prejudicial treatment. In 2002, Mr. Roberson’s two-year old, chronically ill daughter, Nikki, was sick with a high fever and suffered a short fall from bed. Hospital staff did not know Mr. Roberson had autism and judged his response to his daughter’s grave condition as lacking emotion. Mr. Roberson was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to death for Nikki’s death. 

The overwhelming medical and scientific evidence now shows that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes. Mr. Roberson’s innocence case is attracting growing and widespread support from eminent scientists, doctors, faith leaders, innocence groups, former federal judges, best-selling novelist John Grisham, and the lead detective who testified for the prosecution, who now believes he contributed to an innocent person being sent to death row.

The Innocence Project joined Mr. Roberson’s legal team because of the risk that an innocent man could be executed for a crime that never happened.

Here’s what you need to know about Mr. Roberson’s case and the scientifically unsound argument that led to his conviction and death sentence.  

1. The prosecution based its case against Mr. Roberson on the hypothesis that Nikki’s death was caused by SBS — a condition that was never scientifically validated and the premises of which have been discredited by actual science.

Although no evidence or testing ever supported the connection between these symptoms and supposed SBS, by 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a position paper — which is not a scientific, peer-reviewed study — stating that violent shaking and “shaken baby syndrome” should be presumed whenever these three symptoms are observed. Faced with what was then believed to be proof beyond dispute, Mr. Roberson’s own defense lawyer agreed with the State that Nikki must have died from SBS. When Mr. Roberson refused to accept a plea deal, his lawyer argued only that Mr. Roberson had not meant to kill Nikki and that he was mentally impaired.

In 2009, however, six years after Mr. Roberson was sentenced to death, the AAP retreated from the version of SBS used in his trial. Dr. Guthkelch, the neurosurgeon whose paper first posited the SBS hypothesis, later reviewed a number of cases of people asserting innocence and was struck by the number of cases where children had a history of illnesses, indicating their injuries were the result of natural causes, not abuse. In 2015, shortly before his death, Guthkelch told the Washington Post, “I am doing what I can so long as I have a breath to correct a grossly unjust situation.”  Today, no credible science would endorse the SBS premises that Mr. Roberson’s jury was told were sound medical science.

To date, at least 32 parents and caregivers in 18 states have been exonerated after being wrongfully convicted under the shaken baby hypothesis.

2. Nikki was suffering from myriad medical issues that contributed to her death.

However, no doctor at the time of her collapse took a holistic look at her medical history to rule out all the many possible causes of her symptoms, because it was believed at the time that SBS — and only SBS — could explain her condition.  

A differential diagnosis would have required considering, for instance, the facts that, days after her birth, Nikki had the first of many infections that proved resistant to multiple antibiotics, including chronic ear infections that persisted even after she had had tubes surgically implanted. She also had a history of unexplained “breathing apnea” that caused her to suddenly stop breathing, collapse, and turn blue.

The week before her death, Nikki had been vomiting, coughing, and having diarrhea. When her symptoms didn’t stop after five days, Mr. Roberson and his mother took Nikki to their local emergency room in Palestine, Texas, where a doctor prescribed Phenergan, a potent drug that now carries an FDA black-box warning against being prescribed to children of Nikki’s age and with her condition. Nikki was sent home. Her condition did not improve and, that night, her temperature rose to 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit. The next morning, Mr. Roberson took her to a pediatrician, who sent the toddler home, despite a fever of 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and prescribed more Phenergan, in cough syrup with codeine — an opioid now restricted for children under 18 by the FDA due to its risks of causing breathing difficulties and death. Nikki’s toxicology report showed lethal levels of the respiratory-suppressing Phenergan still in her system.

The next night, Nikki was at the home of her maternal grandparents where she was supposed to stay. Despite being in a bitter battle with Mr. Roberson over custody of Nikki, her grandparents called Mr. Roberson and insisted he drive out to the country and pick the child up, which he did.

At home, Mr. Roberson put Nikki into bed — a mattress and box spring propped up on cinder blocks. In the early morning, he awoke when Nikki cried out. He found her on the floor at the foot of the bed. After putting her back into the bed he stayed up and talked to her until they both fell back to sleep.

Later that morning, when the alarm went off, Robert discovered that Nikki was unconscious and her lips were blue. He grabbed her face, not knowing how to revive her, and tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond, he brought Nikki to the emergency room where her heart was resuscitated and she was intubated. But by then, she had likely already experienced brain death, which occurs after 10-12 minutes of oxygen-deprivation.

3. New scientific evidence explains exactly how Nikki died.

On Aug. 1, 2024, Mr. Roberson’s attorneys requested the state district court in Anderson County to reopen his case of actual innocence. The filing states that new medical and scientific evidence shows that Nikki died of severe viral and bacterial pneumonia that progressed to sepsis and then septic shock. There was no homicide. Three experts from a range of medical specialties can now explain exactly how Nikki died. 

Dr. Francis Green, an expert in lung pathology with over 46 years of experience, recently reviewed Nikki’s medical history and her lung tissue under a microscope. His detailed report explains that Nikki’s lungs were infected with two different and virulent types of pneumonia – a viral and bacterial infection – which clogged Nikki’s lungs, starving her brain of oxygen and causing her death. Dr. Green’s detailed analysis shows that Nikki’s pneumonia started many days or weeks before her final hospitalization. 

Dr. Keenan Bora, an expert in medical toxicology and emergency room medicine, has concluded that a post-mortem toxicology report shows that Nikki had dangerously high levels of promethazine in her system, prescribed by two different doctors on two consecutive days. Promethazine is a drug no longer prescribed to children Nikki’s age and in her condition because it impairs their ability to breathe and can be fatal. Dr. Bora has concluded that this drug exacerbated Nikki’s breathing problems and likely hastened her death from her pneumonia infection. 

Dr. Julie Mack, an expert in pediatric radiology, has concluded that the initial CAT scans of Nikki’s head show only a single minor impact site on her head. Dr. Mack reviewed CAT scans discovered in the courthouse basement in 2018 – on the day that the convicting court’s evidentiary hearing was supposed to begin – which had been lost for 15 years. As interpreted by the only type of expert qualified to read them, the scans corroborate Mr. Roberson’s statement at the hospital that Nikki had fallen out of bed and possibly hit her head. 

  • “I am doing what I can so long as I have a breath to correct a grossly unjust situation.”

Dr. Guthkelch

4. Symptoms of Mr. Roberson’s autism were used against him.

Mr. Roberson left school after completing 8th grade with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder — which impacts how people communicate and interact with others. Symptoms of autism can include avoiding eye contact, “unusual” mood or emotional reactions, the appearance of indifference, fixation on details that strike others as “abnormal,” and difficulty expressing feelings.

Hospital staff, who did not know that Mr. Roberson has autism, were suspicious of his flat affect and interpreted his response to his daughter’s condition as lacking emotion. They viewed his inability to explain Nikki’s condition as a sign that he must be lying.

5. Misguided SBS diagnoses prevailed.

The same doctor in Palestine who had treated Nikki for vomiting, coughing, and diarrhea by prescribing Phenergan treated her again, when Mr. Roberson rushed her to the emergency room. After a CT scan on Nikki’s head showed bleeding under the dura and brain swelling (two of the alleged triad of SBS symptoms), the doctor concluded that it would be “basically impossible” for Nikki’s condition to be caused by a fall out of bed or anything other than abuse.
   
Because the local hospital in Palestine was not equipped to treat Nikki, she was transported on life support to Dallas Children’s Hospital, where her case was referred to a child abuse pediatrician. This doctor did not review Nikki’s medical history; she spoke only to law enforcement and the maternal grandparents who insisted Nikki had been “totally well.” Upon reviewing Nikki’s CT scans, she saw no fractures of any kind and no neck injuries, but she saw the triad of conditions she considered to be a certain indicator of SBS. The doctor “diagnosed” violent shaking as the one and only possible cause. She then gave an affidavit about her SBS diagnosis to law enforcement, who arrested Mr. Roberson before Nikki’s autopsy was even performed.

The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy did not have any information about Nikki’s extensive medical history. She was also not aware of the CT scans, which showed a single, minor impact on the back right of Nikki’s head (consistent with Mr. Roberson’s report of a fall), nor did she have Nikki’s toxicology results, which would have shown toxic levels of Phenergan still in Nikki’s system. 

Robert Roberson with his daughter Nikki before she passed away. (Image courtesy of the Roberson family)

Robert Roberson with his daughter Nikki before she passed away. (Image courtesy of the Roberson family)

6. The jury was presented with unfounded claims of child abuse. 

At trial, one nurse claimed she saw signs of sexual abuse in Nikki’s case, though no doctors or other medical professionals involved in Nikki’s care observed any such signs and testing from a sexual assault kit produced no substantiating evidence. The nurse, who presented herself as a “Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner” (SANE), was, in fact, not SANE-certified and offered her personal views on pedophiles in her testimony, further stoking prejudice against Mr. Roberson so the jury could see him, with no history of violence, as a person capable of violently shaking a child.

7. Top neuropathologists and forensic pathologists support that Nikki died of natural and accidental causes.

In 2016, a week before Mr. Roberson’s scheduled execution date, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed his execution based, in part, on a then-new law permitting legal challenges based on changes in science used to obtain convictions. His case was sent back to the trial court, which conducted a nine-day evidentiary hearing in 2021. There, experts explained that SBS had been discredited and provided compelling evidence that Nikki died of natural and accidental causes. A pathologist testified that Nikki suffered from a severe form of undiagnosed viral pneumonia that has since been more widely understood due to COVID-19. Signs of Nikki’s advanced pneumonia were noted in her autopsy but, at the time, were unexplained. Tragically, unaware of Nikki’s pneumonia, her treating doctors prescribed her with high levels of prescription medication (found in autopsy toxicology results) that are now understood to be deadly in children of Nikki’s age and in her condition. And biomechanical evidence now shows that short falls like Nikki’s can cause severe injury and even death, an explanation for Nikki’s condition that was vehemently rejected by every medical witness who had testified at her trial.        

8. Mr. Roberson deserves a fair shot at justice before he is executed on Oct. 17. 

The trial court ignored new evidence from six expert witnesses and rubber-stamped the prosecution’s 17-page proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, which relied almost exclusively on the outdated scientific evidence introduced at the 2003 trial and conducted when the medical establishment accepted unquestioningly that the triad of intracranial conditions observed in Nikki could be used to “diagnose” shaking and abuse.

Now that the State has sought an Oct. 17 execution date, his life is in jeopardy. Mr. Roberson has never had a true chance at justice in this case — his federal right to due process and a fair trial were violated by the State’s introduction of false and misleading forensic science. Actual science — supported by studies, empirical testing, and a holistic reexamination of the autopsy and Nikki’s medical history — has exposed that no crime occurred here.

9. Mr. Roberson’s innocence case is attracting growing and widespread attention including from the lead detective who testified for the prosecution at trial, but has come to believe that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes.

“I was a police officer in Palestine, Texas for 14 years and the lead detective on the case where Robert Roberson was accused of shaking his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, to death,” said Brian Wharton, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, who was the assistant chief of the Palestine Police Department when he retired in 2006. “I testified for the prosecution and helped send Mr. Roberson to death row in 2003. For over 20 years, I have thought that something went very wrong in Mr. Roberson’s case and feared that justice was not served. I have come to believe that Nikki died of accidental and natural causes and that there was no crime. I am convinced that Mr. Roberson is innocent.”

10. You can help stop Mr. Roberson’s unjust execution, but time is running out. 

We have until Oct. 17 to stop Mr. Roberson’s execution. Here’s how you can help stop this irreversible injustice:

  1. Call Gov. Abbott at 361-264-9653
  2. Sign the petition to stop Mr. Roberson’s execution.
  3. Share Mr. Roberson’s case on all social media channels using our social media toolkit.
  4. Use your voicecreate an Instagram post, reel, or TikTok to share the background of Mr. Roberson’s case, the reasons he’s innocent, and all the missteps in this miscarriage of justice, and urge your followers to sign our petition.

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