An American suffering from autism and convicted for the death of his daughter in 2002, attributed to “shaken baby” syndrome despite serious doubts that have since arisen about this diagnosis, obtained at the last minute a stay from the Supreme Court of Texas on Thursday evening.
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Furthermore, in Alabama, Derrick Dearman, 36, convicted of killing five people with an ax and bullets in 2016, was executed in the evening at the Atmore penitentiary, announced the authorities of this other Southern state. .
At the end of an evening of suspense, the Texas Supreme Court granted a request from members of a parliamentary committee which summoned Robert Roberson for a hearing on October 21, in a final attempt to obtain a stay of the execution of this 57-year-old man, which was scheduled for Thursday evening.
A trial judge had previously issued an order at the request of these parliamentarians prohibiting the Texas authorities from executing Robert Roberson before he could testify before this commission. But an appeals court, seized by the state prosecutor, overturned this decision.
“Although the courts have abandoned it, this is not the case with the Texas House of Representatives,” wrote these two parliamentarians, Joe Moody and Jeff Leach, in a joint statement, welcoming the Supreme Court’s decision.
“We look forward to welcoming him to the Texas Capitol and finally giving him and the truth a chance to be heard,” they add.
Autism diagnosed late
The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court previously rejected the request for a stay.
In an opinion attached to this decision, one of the three progressive judges, Sonia Sotomayor, affirmed that “a stay allowing the examination of credible elements in favor of Roberson’s innocence is imperative” but recognized that the court could not legally grant it to him. She therefore recommended that the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, use his power to postpone the execution for 30 days.
With that of Derrick Dearman, 20 executions have been carried out in the United States since the start of the year, all by lethal injection except two in Alabama by nitrogen inhalation, a method that the UN has compared to a form of “torture”.
Robert Roberson’s defenders argue that the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, made in 2002 at the hospital where he brought his daughter Nikki to the emergency room in critical condition, was incorrect.
In addition, his autism, finally officially diagnosed in 2018 and interpreted as indifference to the situation, weighed heavily in his conviction, according to them.
“Look for someone to blame”
“There was no crime, only the tragic death of a little girl from natural causes,” her lawyers stressed in their appeal to the Supreme Court.
They are based in particular on recent medical analyzes attributing Nikki’s death to serious pneumonia, undetected at the time, aggravated by the prescription of unsuitable medications, as attested in a letter by 34 doctors.
Former police officer Brian Wharton, in charge of the case at the time and who has for years defended the annulment of the conviction, again regretted Tuesday that the investigation had exclusively followed the trail of shaken baby syndrome.
“We were looking for a culprit, we put this label on him and we put it on a pseudo-scientific basis,” he admitted.
Robert Roberson’s supporters also point to a Texas Court of Appeals ruling that last week, in a similar case, overturned a 2000 conviction based on shaken baby syndrome, ruling that the scientific analysis had evolved since then, and ordered a new trial.
“The most astonishing thing in Robert’s case” is that there is “no crime,” the bestselling thriller author John Grisham, a former lawyer and activist in the struggle, was indignant in September. against judicial errors.
But the Texas Pardon Board on Wednesday unanimously rejected requests to commute his sentence and stay his execution for 180 days.
The request for clemency in favor of Robert Roberson is supported by 86 elected representatives of the Texas House of Representatives, including more than a third of Republicans.
