Overview
- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Oct. 9 stayed Roberson’s Oct. 16 execution and remanded his case to the Anderson County trial court to evaluate whether evolving medical evidence warrants relief or a new trial.
- In citing last year’s Ex parte Roark decision that overturned a shaken-baby conviction, the court relied on the state’s 2013 statute allowing challenges when foundational scientific testimony has shifted, a pathway that has not yet produced a new trial for a death-row inmate.
- Roberson’s attorneys argue Nikki Curtis died from chronic pneumonia and medication that suppressed her breathing, not abuse, and they submitted new expert opinions including a joint statement from 10 pathologists questioning the original autopsy.
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and some physicians and family members continue to assert that Nikki was a victim of child abuse, the state may contest the stay, and a separate request for relief is pending at the U.S. Fifth Circuit.
- The case has drawn bipartisan and high-profile support, including from the Innocence Project, author John Grisham and the former lead detective, and this marks at least the third time since 2016 that an execution date has been halted in a case that could have been the nation’s first execution tied to a shaken-baby diagnosis.