The attorney for a Texas death row inmate convicted of killing his baby daughter insists her client needs more time after the state Supreme Court paved the way for his execution to move forward, following a brief pause.
"We are grateful that the validity of the Committee's right to obtain Mr. Roberson's testimony was recognized today by the Texas Supreme Court as well as an expectation that the Executive Branch work cooperatively to obtain that testimony," Gretchen Sween, the defense attorney for 57-year-old Robert Roberson, said in a statement to the Lawyer Herald Friday.
"The ancillary benefit to Mr. Roberson of staying his execution hopefully gives time for those with power to address a grave wrong to see what is apparent to anyone who gives the medical evidence fair consideration: his daughter Nikki's death was a tragedy not a crime; Robert is innocent. Given the overwhelming new evidence of innocence, we ask the State of Texas to refrain from setting a new execution date."
"The lead detective, Brian Wharton, is now convinced that Robert was hastily and wrongly judged as guilty when he was an autistic father who was incapable of explaining his daughter's complex medical condition that it took highly trained medical specialists years to figure out," she stated.
"Mr. Wharton was in charge of investigating Nikki's death who deferred to a doctor's shaken baby hypothesis, made even before her autopsy was performed, and ordered that Mr. Roberson be arrested; he testified for the prosecution, and now believes Mr. Roberson is innocent."
"No Texan wants an innocent man executed," Sween added.
Roberson was scheduled to die by lethal injection Oct. 17 after having spent 20 years on condemned row for the capital murder of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in Palestine, Texas in 2002.
At the time, Roberson was convicted of shaken baby syndrome, based on now-debunked, faulty scientific evidence.
Later on, the investigation confirmed Nikki died from double pneumonia, pre-existing conditions that were treated with now-banned opioids, and undiagnosed sepsis, according to the Texas Tribune.
Minutes before he was to be visit the death chamber last month, the Texas Supreme Court granted a stay in response to a subpoena issued by state lawmakers ordering him to testify on a date after his scheduled execution.
In its Friday ruling, the state's high court determined that while the Texas House committee appropriately brought up a civil law issue, it exceeded its authority and encroached on the powers of other government branches by trying to postpone the execution.
"We do not repudiate legislative investigatory power, but any testimony relevant to a legislative task here could have been obtained long before the death warrant was issued—or even afterwards, but before the execution," Justice Evan Young wrote in the opinion for the court, according to KERA News.
