TEXAS – A week after a judge set an Oct. 16 execution date for Robert Roberson, an East Texas man convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, in 2003, his attorneys filed two motions in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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The first motion is an Emergency Motion for Stay of Execution, which asks that Roberson’s Oct. 16 execution date be stayed to make sure that the court has enough time to complete its review of his pending subsequent application for habeas corpus relief.
The second motion filed is a Motion for Oral Argument, which Roberson’s attorneys say has never been held before the CCA since his innocence was first raised in 2016.
The motions come after State District Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set the October execution date on July 16 at the request of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Office.
Roberson’s lawyers initially objected to Paxton’s request, arguing that Roberson still had an appeal pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that his legal team says contains “powerful new evidence of his innocence.” The latest appeal was filed five months ago.
Roberson, 58, was convicted of the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued he violently shook his daughter back and forth, causing severe head trauma in what’s called shaken baby syndrome. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.
Jackson said the lack of a ruling by the appeals court was a sign it needed more time to review the case. But he also said that he had to strike a balance between the efforts by Roberson’s legal team and a “justice system that doesn’t move, never reaches finality.”
“At some point, we have to say the date needs to be set,” Jackson said.
Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s attorneys, argued there was no legal reason to set the execution date but that “perhaps there is a political reason.”
“Right now it makes no practical sense and it makes no moral sense,” Sween said.
A lawyer with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which took over the case from the Anderson County District Attorney’s Office, told the judge that with the execution still 90 days away, the appeals court has time to issue its decision.
In the appeal filed in February, Roberson’s legal team said that based on new evidence, “no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder; and unreliable and outdated scientific and medical evidence was material to his conviction.”
The new evidence includes statements from pathologists that state the girl’s death was not a homicide and who question the reliability of conclusions by the medical examiner on the cause of death.
Roberson received a last-minute stay last year after a flurry of legal challenges that were prompted by an unprecedented maneuver from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.
Roberson was in a holding cell on Oct. 17, 2024, a few feet away from America’s busiest death chamber in Huntsville, waiting to receive a lethal injection when he was granted the stay after a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for him to testify before a House committee several days after he was scheduled to die.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled in November that although the subpoena was valid, it could not be used to circumvent a scheduled execution.
Roberson never testified before the House committee as Paxton’s office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers.
The Emergency Motion says that the district court should not have scheduled an execution while the CCA is considering Roberson’s subsequent application. Roberson’s attorney says if his execution is not stayed, Roberson will be the first person executed in the United States for a conviction obtained using the “Shaken Baby Syndrome” hypothesis.
“It is reasonable to assume that the CCA has been carefully considering the wealth of evidence proving Robert’s innocence. Comprehensive medical and scientific explanations for his daughter’s condition both at the time of her final collapse and then two days later after extensive medical intervention, have been presented to the Court, including new expert medical opinions filed in February,” said Sween.