A Texas board has rejected a clemency request for a person going through execution over a case of “shaken child syndrome” regardless of doubts over the proof within the case.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted in opposition to Robert Roberson’s demise sentence being commuted to life in jail or that his execution, set for Thursday, be delayed.
Roberson, 57, is scheduled to obtain a deadly injection for the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, within the East Texas metropolis of Palestine. Roberson has lengthy maintained his innocence.
Texas lawmakers meet with Robert Roberson at a jail in Livingston, Texas, Sept. 27. (Legal Justice Reform Caucus through AP)
The parole board’s resolution got here a day after an East Texas choose final week denied requests by Roberson’s attorneys to cease his deadly injection by vacating the execution warrant and recusing the choose who had issued the warrant.
Roberson’s scheduled execution has renewed debate over shaken child syndrome, which refers to a critical mind damage precipitated when a baby’s head is damage by way of shaking or another violent influence.
Roberson’s legal professionals and a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, medical consultants and others have urged Gov. Greg Abbott to cease Roberson’s execution. They are saying his conviction was based mostly on defective and outdated scientific proof associated to shaken child syndrome.
Abbott can solely grant clemency after receiving a suggestion from the board. However Abbott does have the ability to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve with no board suggestion.
Roberson’s supporters say medical doctors misdiagnosed Curtis’ accidents as being associated to shaken child syndrome and that new proof has proven the lady died not from abuse, however from problems associated to extreme pneumonia.
Texas lawmakers meet with Robert Roberson at a jail in Livingston, Texas, Sept. 27. (Legal Justice Reform Caucus through AP)
“We urge Governor Abbott to grant a reprieve of 30 days to permit litigation to proceed and have a courtroom hear the overwhelming new medical and scientific proof that exhibits Robert Roberson’s chronically unwell, two-year-old daughter, Nikki, died of pure and unintended causes, not abuse,” mentioned Gretchen Sween, one among Roberson’s attorneys, in an announcement to Fox Information Digital. “A reprieve will even give Texas legislators time to analyze why Texas’s vaunted ‘modified science’ habeas regulation, which permits prisoners to problem convictions based mostly on science that seems to be disproven or unsuitable, isn’t being utilized as supposed within the courts.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, different medical organizations and prosecutors say the analysis is legitimate, and that medical doctors have a look at every part – together with any sicknesses – when figuring out if accidents had been attributable to shaken child syndrome.
Casandra Rivera, left, Anna Vasquez, second from left, and Elizabeth Ramirez, middle, of the “San Antonio 4” group, maintain bins with petitions being delivered on the Texas State capitol to Gov. Greg Abbott in search of the pardoning of Robert Roberson’s execution, in Austin, Texas, Wednesday. (AP Photograph/Nadia Lathan)
The Anderson County District Lawyer’s Workplace, which prosecuted Roberson, has mentioned in courtroom paperwork that after a 2022 listening to to think about the brand new proof within the case, a choose rejected the theories that pneumonia and different ailments precipitated Curtis’ demise.
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Prosecutors keep Roberson’s new proof doesn’t disprove their case that Curtis died from accidents inflicted by her father.
The Related Press contributed to this report.