A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who used their legislative powers and the courts to stop an execution last week with only hours to spare have drawn public rebuke from state Attorney General Ken Paxton, stirring claims against his office on Thursday of “misrepresentation” in the death row inmate’s case.
Robert Roberson, 57, was set to become the first person in the U.S. executed in a “shaken baby” case until members of the state House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee issued a subpoena to have him testify at a legislative hearing this week. Despite efforts by the attorney general’s office to appeal, as the execution was scheduled to get underway on the evening of Oct. 17, the Texas Supreme Court, in an 11th-hour decision, sided with the lawmakers, handing Roberson a temporary reprieve.
Paxton had not personally commented on the issue until Wednesday, when his social media account posted a list of reasons for why Roberson’s execution should proceed.
“Today, my office released the original autopsy report and other evidence to correct falsehoods amplified by a coalition interfering with the capital punishment proceedings in which Robert Roberson was scheduled to be executed for the murder of his two-year-old daughter Nikki,” the attorney general said.
Among the reasons he gave were that the jury did not convict Roberson on the basis of “shaken baby syndrome” and that the father murdered his daughter in 2002 by “beating her so brutally that she ultimately died.”
A news release expanding on the reasons added that Roberson had a “history of violently abusing his daughter”; the medical examiner who performed Nikki’s autopsy testified at his trial that there were impact wounds that were more severe than merely being violently shaken; and Roberson’s story about how his daughter became injured when she fell out of bed prior to her death was inconsistent.
The attorney general’s office also described alleged sexual abuse. Roberson was never charged with sexually abusing his daughter.
Paxton’s strong public statement drew the attention of Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, who is an ally of Gov. Greg Abbott and a vocal Roberson supporter.
He called the statement “completely unhinged from reality,” and said that “whoever wrote and released it should be evaluated for mental competence by the AG’s office.”
Paxton’s response follows the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee’s hearing this week about Roberson’s case. Roberson was subpoenaed to appear, but his testimony was postponed.
At the hearing, a woman who served on the jury of his 2003 trial testified that Roberson was convicted solely on the shaken baby evidence presented, and that if she was given the scientific and medical data in Nikki’s case available today, she would have found him not guilty.
Since Roberson’s conviction in 2003, the science behind a shaken baby diagnosis has evolved, and it is now medical consensus that other medical conditions, including infections, accidental trauma and pre-existing illnesses, can also cause the symptoms associated with violent shaking.
Roberson’s defense contends that Nikki was chronically ill, and other ailments in the days before her death, such as persistent respiratory issues and a fever, as well as a doctor prescribing a high level of a drug that is no longer administered to children as young as she was, help to explain her death.
The attorney general’s office said Wednesday that state lawmakers have “attempted to mislead the public by falsely claiming that Roberson was unfairly convicted through ‘junk science’ concerning ‘shaken baby syndrome.’”
In a response Wednesday, House committee Chairman Joe Moody slammed the office’s statement as “a collection of exaggerations, misrepresentations and full-on untruths completely divorced from fact and context.”
He added that lawmakers planned to provide further information to “undermine” the office’s statements.
Roberson’s legal team made its own point-by-point rebuttal of the attorney general’s claims, calling them a “misrepresentation,” including how witnesses who knew Roberson, such as his estranged girlfriend, said he was prone to violence.
“Before prosecutors and police put enormous pressure on these witnesses, none of these three had ever made any allegations that Robert had harmed Nikki in any way,” the legal team said.
They also included a statement from the lead detective in the case, Brian Wharton, who said the sexual assault allegation against Roberson came from an unreliable jailhouse informant trying to curry favor with prosecutors.
“That such material has been irresponsibly highlighted and is being treated as truthful information saddens me deeply,” said Wharton, who believes Roberson is innocent.
Roberson’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween, called Paxton’s statement “stunningly misleading” and believes it was “designed to quash a bipartisan group of lawmakers in their truth-seeking mission, which has riveted the world.”
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