PALESTINE, Texas — A judge during a Tuesday hearing ruled that an East Texas death row inmate’s execution date of this Thursday will remain in place.
Robert Roberson III, 57, was sentenced to death in 2003 in connection with the death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis. He has claimed his innocence for roughly two decades. He is set to be executed this Thursday.
The hearing held Tuesday sought to make his execution date null and void by arguing that Judge Deborah Oakes Evans, who oversaw the case, did not follow the proper retirement procedure. She signed the warrant that set Roberson’s execution date.
Judge Alfonso Charles, presiding judge of the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region, ruled that Evans was properly appointed as a senior judge and she followed the process correctly. There is nothing in the law saying it wasn’t. He denied the defense’s request to vacate the execution.
Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween argued Evans didn’t have the jurisdiction over this case and she should be removed under Texas law due to a question of her impartiality.
The defense says they have no way of knowing they could’ve objected to Evans’ appointment because they weren’t given proper notice. Sween said she wasn’t made aware of Evans’ appointment until this summer when the execution date was set.
Charles asked why Sween waited until Sept. 25 to file a motion recuse. She said recusal is fraught and a person shouldn’t pop off and do that so quickly.
Sween said Evans must be recused if her impartiality could be questioned. Sween said she didn’t file a motion to recuse because the defense was busy fighting off Roberson’s execution. The defense claimed they were denied hearings over and over.
Sween claimed Sween has deep relations with judges and the district attorney who have been connected to upholding a conviction against Roberson.
Ultimately, Charles ruled that elected officials knowing each other is the nature of a smaller community, and friendships alone are not enough to justify recusal. Based on that, he also denied the motion to recuse Evans.
After the hearing, Sween said she’s filing a motion to challenge Roberson’s unlawful detention on the grounds of junk science claims and she intends to file an appeal with the Texas Supreme Court.
State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-McKinney), who is among the representatives who believe Roberson to be innocent, said the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is set to give a recommendation regarding clemency to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Also, the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, which Leach is a member of, will be having a hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m. about this case, Leach said. The specific topic will be the criminal procedure related to capital punishment and new science under the Code of Criminal Procedure, according to the agenda.
‘SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME’
According to the Associated Press, Roberson would be the first person in the U.S. to be executed in connection with a “Shaken Baby Syndrome” conviction.
According to Roberson’s legal team, his daughter Nikki died from an illness, accident and medical error, not because of any abuse.
In January 2002, he rush his daughter’s limp, blue body to the hospital after he found her unconscious and seeing that she had fallen from the bed in their Palestine home, according to the Texas Tribune.
Roberson was arrested in 2002 based on a doctor’s “Shaken Baby Syndrome” hypothesis. The defense team said Brian Wharton, lead detective in charge of investigating Nikki’s death, has come to believe that Roberson is innocent.
“Robert’s daughter falling off a playscape. They land with sufficient force in just the wrong way. It can cause this same condition that was found in his daughter, and it can take hours or even days to develop,” Sween said. “So the old ‘shaken baby’ idea was whoever was with the child when they collapsed must be guilty of a horrible crime, because it would have happened instantly.”
Sween also said the same set of conditions is the similar to pneumonia.
The defense has also noted that investigators at the time did not know that Roberson has autism, and that’s why he appeared to lack emotion when Nikki was taken to the hospital.
MOST RECENT APPEALS
On Oct. 7, the attorneys filed a motion to stay the execution with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. However, on Friday, that appeal was rejected by the CCA, leaving him with fewer options to the stop the execution.
On Sept. 17, Roberson filed a petition seeking clemency from Gov. Greg Abbott, which documents submitted by the defense say is supported by many.
Additionally, 86 Texas state representatives have signed a letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Abbott urging clemency for Roberson. Some of those same lawmakers met with Roberson at the prison unit in Livingston to pray with him.
State Rep. Jay Dean, R-Longview, who represents Gregg, Harrison, and Marion counties, and state Rep. Jill Dutton, R-Ben Wheeler, who represents Hopkins, Hunt, Van Zandt counties, are among the 86 representatives.
“If there’s some evidence that’s come forward, scientific evidence that shows that two things, one, then it disputes the phenomenon called baby shaking, but also that the child had other physiological complications. That’s what the child died from,” Dean said.
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