The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.
In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson had been confined to a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.
“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution. “He praised God and he thanked his supporters. And that’s pretty much what he had to say.”
She said Roberson would be returned to the Polunsky Unit, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the east, where the state’s male death row is located.
Roberson, 57, was convicted of killing of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. |
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