The top criminal court in Texas on Thursday halted the execution of Robert Roberson, an autistic Texas man who was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter by shaking her, directing a lower court to look again at disputed evidence over “shaken baby syndrome.”
The two-page order from the Court of Criminal Appeals came a week before his execution date next Thursday. It was the latest turn in a legal saga that has divided Republican elected officials and attracted national attention, including from figures like Dr. Phil McGraw, the television personality, and the novelist John Grisham, who argued against Mr. Roberson’s execution.
The execution had been pushed by Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has argued that the evidence supports the death penalty. Mr. Roberson was convicted after a 2003 trial in which prosecutors presented medical evidence and testimony that his daughter, Nikki, had been beaten and violently shaken, causing her death. Two witnesses testified that they had seen him shake his daughter and demonstrated the shaking on a teddy bear for the jurors.
But Mr. Roberson’s lawyers have raised questions about the shaken baby diagnosis, which has been challenged in recent years in court as “junk science.” They argued that Nikki was not murdered but died of medical complications from illness and medications.
“We are relieved and grateful,” said Gretchen Sween, a lawyer for Mr. Roberson. “We are confident that an objective review of the science and medical evidence will show there was no crime.”
Texas was the first state in the country to pass a “junk science” law, in 2013, which allows for legal challenges to be brought in cases where the forensic evidence that led to a conviction has since been discredited.
Last year, the high criminal court applied the law in a different shaken baby case, ordering a new trial for a Dallas-area man, Andrew Roark, who was convicted in 2000 of injuring a child by shaking. In that decision, the court said medical understanding had changed regarding shaken baby syndrome.
In its order on Thursday, the court said that it was directing the lower court to resolve the question in Mr. Roberson’s case in light of the decision in the Roark case.
The court found that the medical understanding had changed regarding shaken baby syndrome. It specifically cited the lack of evidence that shaking alone could produce the kind of under-the-skin bleeding seen in the child.
The Roark decision represented “a landmark opinion,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court said in a statement released as the high court denied a review of the Roberson case last year.
Ms. Sween, his lawyer, said the question now facing the lower court is whether the high criminal court’s decision “granting relief to the now-exonerated Andrew Roark requires relief for Robert as well.”
Mr. Roberson’s execution has been put off several times before, including after a dramatic and novel gambit last year by a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers. The lawmakers, led by a handful of Republicans in the Texas House, forced a postponement by issuing a subpoena for Mr. Roberson to testify before them.
The move challenged the division of powers between the State Legislature and the executive branch. The case reached the Texas Supreme Court, with Gov. Greg Abbott arguing against the subpoena. The high civil court ultimately ruled that the legislators’ maneuver had gone too far, and allowed a new execution date to be set.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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