Shock new evidence shows Texas man set to be executed in DAYS could be innocent

Shocking new evidence suggests a Texas man scheduled to be executed within days may be innocent.

Robert Roberson, 57, was convicted in 2003 of murdering his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, by shaking her so violently that he caused irreversible brain damage and death from shaken baby syndrome, also known as head trauma.

He will now be executed on October 17.

But his lawyers have submitted new evidence showing that doctors may have misdiagnosed the young girl’s cause of death, questioning whether shaken baby syndrome even exists.

A bipartisan majority of 86 Texas lawmakers and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles have now recommended clemency — though the final decision rests with Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Prosecutors have argued that Nikki’s 2002 death was consistent with shaken baby syndrome – pointing to the diagnostic “triad” of intracranial bleeding, brain swelling and bleeding behind the retina.

They rejected Roberson’s claim that his young daughter had simply fallen out of bed the night before and that he found her unconscious, limp and blue.

Instead, medical staff at a Palestinian hospital believed Nikki’s injuries – which included bruises on her face, a bump on the back of her head and bleeding outside her brain – were all caused by abuse and alerted police to the scene. according to the Dallas Morning News.

But Nikki was chronically ill and had a high fever in the days before her death. Lawyers for the Innocence Project argue.

She developed the first of many infections that proved resistant to antibiotics just days after her birth — including a chronic ear infection that persisted even after she had tubes surgically implanted.

The young girl also had a history of unexplained ‘respiratory apnea’, which caused her to suddenly stop breathing, collapse and turn blue.

Then, within just a week of her death, Nikki experienced vomiting, coughing and diarrhea, Roberson’s attorneys said.

When these symptoms persisted for five days straight, Roberson and his mother took Nikki to the local emergency room, where a doctor prescribed Phenergan – a drug that the Food and Drug Administration is now warning against prescribing to children Nikki’s age and in her condition. .

Still, her condition continued to worsen as her temperature rose to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for which another doctor prescribed more Phenergan in a cough syrup containing codeine – an opioid now restricted for children under 18 due to the risk of respiratory problems. difficulties and death.

In fact, Nikki’s toxicology report showed lethal levels of Phenergan in her system at the time of her death, attorneys say.

Roberson has maintained his innocence in his daughter’s death during the more than two decades he has spent on death row, and on August 1, 2024, his attorneys asked the district court in Anderson County to reopen his case.

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.

It says that Dr. Francis Green, an expert in lung pathology with more than 46 years of experience, reviewed Nikki’s medical history and her lung tissue under a microscope.

He discovered that her lungs were infected with two different, virulent forms of pneumonia, which clogged her lungs, deprived her brain of oxygen and ultimately caused death, Green wrote in a report.

The pneumonia started many days or weeks before her last hospitalization, he added.

Dr. Keenan Bora also concluded that Nikki’s post-mortem toxicology report shows that she had dangerously high levels of promethazine in her system, prescribed by two different doctors on two consecutive days, and Dr. Julie Mack concluded that initial CAT scans of Nikki’s head show only a small impact location – consistent with Roberson’s account that she fell off a bed and possibly hit her head.

Roberson’s attorneys have even questioned whether shaken baby syndrome is an actual medical diagnosis.

It was first posited by neurosurgeon Norman Guthkelch in 1971 and has since become an accepted medical fact.

But researchers have questioned the hypothesis that shaking a baby can cause such brain damage since the 1980s, with some studies concluding that it cannot biomechanically cause the injuries Guthkelch described: according to USA Today.

A 2016 systematic review by the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Social Services Assessment, for example: concluded there is ‘limited scientific evidence that the triad, and therefore its components, may be associated with traumatic shaking’ and there is ‘insufficient scientific evidence on which to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the triad in identifying traumatic shaking .’

Another study published in Forensic Science International also found that a significant number of patients were misdiagnosed with mistaken head trauma, citing other conditions that can cause clinical and imaging “findings commonly associated with AHT.”

Even Dr. Guthkelch himself has since expressed doubts about shaken baby syndrome.

In 2011 he has a National Public Radio reporter told me he “concerns that it is too often used by medical researchers and physicians without regard to other possible causes for a child’s death or injury.”

The following year he also questioned his hypothesis in the Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy, proverb he was concerned about the “emotion and division within the medical community over shaken baby syndrome/head trauma abuse,” which he said “hindered our commitment to pursuing the truth.”

Shortly before he died, Guthkelch also told the Washington Post that he was struck by the high number of diagnoses of shaken baby syndrome that could be attributed to natural causes and not abuse.

“I was absolutely shocked when I came back 20 years later and heard all this nonsense about locking up mothers,” he says. said in 2015.

The legal argument previously worked in 2016, when Roberson was granted a stay of execution after his lawyers claimed his conviction was based on “junk science” and “false, misleading and scientifically invalid” testimony.

However, in 2023, Texas’ highest criminal court decided that doubts about his daughter’s cause of death were not enough to overturn his death sentence – and scheduled his execution for October 17. reports the Texas Tribune.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also rejected both a motion to halt the execution and a final request for damages filed by Roberson’s attorneys earlier this month, without reviewing the merits of the claims.

That forced the lawyers to submit a request for clemency on September 17.

“Nikki’s death… was not a crime – unless it is a crime for a parent to be unable to explain complex medical problems that even trained medical professionals at the time could not understand,” they wrote. according to KLTV.

“No informed physician today would presume abuse based on a trio of main internal conditions, as occurred in Robert’s case,” the petition continued.

‘But at the time Robert was accused and convicted, conventional medical thinking allowed doctors to skip consideration of other factors and rely on shaking and head trauma – an approach that has since been completely rejected as flawed.’

More than 80 state lawmakers have since written to the Board of Pardons and Paroles in support of the pardon request, citing the “voluminous new evidence” and expressing “serious concerns” that Texas is preparing to execute Roberson “for a crime that did not take place’. .’

“It should shock all Texans that we are headed for an execution despite this new evidence,” they wrote.

“Other states consider Texas a leader in both upholding the rule of law and addressing wrongful convictions.

“We now look to you to prevent our state from tarnishing that reputation by allowing this execution to proceed.”

Still, prosecutors have maintained that the evidence supporting Roberson’s conviction is “clear and convincing” and argue that the science surrounding shaken baby syndrome has not changed as much as the defense claims.

The board can make a decision up to two days before the execution, but the final decision ultimately rests with the governor.