Texas faces execution of autistic man in ‘shocked baby’ death | National

Unless a last-minute appeal is successful, the US state of Texas will this week execute an autistic man whose murder conviction was based on a misdiagnosis of “shaken baby syndrome” by his lawyers.

Robert Roberson, 57, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday at the state prison in Huntsville in the February 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki.

Roberson’s case has attracted the attention of the Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions, bestselling American author John Grisham, Texas legislators and medical experts.

Among those seeking to stop Roberson’s execution is the man who put him behind bars – Brian Wharton, the former chief detective for the City of Palestine.

“Knowing everything I know now, I firmly believe that Robert is an innocent man,” Wharton said at a recent news conference organized by Roberson’s supporters. “The system failed, Robert.”

Grisham, author of the legal thrillers “The Firm” and “A Time to Kill,” also appeared at the event and reported on cases including Roberson’s “Keep Me Wake at Night.”

“When you’re wrongfully convicted, you realize how many innocent people are in prison,” said Grisham, a former lawyer.

“The amazing thing about Robert’s case is that there was no crime,” added Grisham, a board member of the Innocence Project, which has helped free more than 250 innocent people from U.S. prisons since its founding in 1992.

Roberson’s lawyers say the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome made at the hospital where his chronically ill daughter died was incorrect and the cause of death was actually pneumonia that worsened when doctors prescribed the wrong medication .

Wharton, the former detective and now Methodist Church minister, said a hospital doctor’s conclusion that the toddler died after being violently shaken “led the investigation from that point on to the exclusion of all other possibilities.”

– “Completely exposed” –

According to his lawyers, Roberson would be the first person executed in the United States on a conviction for “shaken baby syndrome,” which the American Academy of Pediatrics now classifies as abusive head trauma.

“In the two decades since Mr. Roberson’s trial, evidence-based science has clearly debunked the version of the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis presented to his jury,” said Kate Judson of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences .

More than 30 parents and caregivers in 18 states have been exonerated after being wrongfully convicted based on “unscientific” testimony from shaken babies, Judson said.

Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, said his autism spectrum disorder, which was only diagnosed in 2018, was also not taken into account and contributed to his arrest and conviction.

During the medical crisis involving his daughter, Roberson “closed off, and his outward lack of affect was interpreted as a lack of caring,” Sween said.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday rejected an emergency request to stay Roberson’s execution and order a new trial.

Another appeal is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in another state court, and Roberson’s lawyers have also asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency.

Citing the “extensive new scientific evidence” that casts doubt on Roberson’s guilt, a bipartisan group of 86 Texas state lawmakers also called on the parole board and governor to grant clemency.

There have been 19 executions in the United States this year, including the Sept. 24 execution of Marcellus Williams in the Midwestern state of Missouri, whose case was also supported by the Innocence Project because there were doubts about his guilt.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – have moratoriums in place.

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