New execution date set for Texas man Robert Roberson in shaken baby syndrome case

HOUSTON (AP) — A judge on Wednesday set a new execution date for Robert Roberson, a Texas man who won a last-minute reprieve last year and could become the first person in the U.S. to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

State district Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set an Oct. 16 execution date for Roberson, who was brought in from death row to attend the hearing in Palestine, Texas. Shackled and wearing a black and white striped prison uniform, Roberson did not speak during the hearing.

As he was led away at the end, someone in the courtroom yelled, “We love you Robert.” Roberson replied, “I love you.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office had requested that the execution date be scheduled. Roberson’s lawyers objected, arguing Roberson still has 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.