By Vanguard Staff
Robert Roberson, a Texas man sentenced to death for the 2002 death of his two-year-old daughter, has filed an emergency motion with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) seeking a stay of execution and oral argument to present what his attorneys describe as overwhelming new evidence of innocence.
Roberson, who is scheduled to be executed on October 16, 2025, was previously granted a temporary reprieve in 2024 after a bipartisan group of lawmakers intervened just days before his execution.
The emergency filings submitted Wednesday include a renewed request for oral argument—something the court has never held in Roberson’s case despite years of litigation—and an urgent plea to halt the scheduled execution so the court can fully consider newly filed evidence.
“This kind of evidence is complex. And misinformation about the physical evidence developed both at trial and in post-conviction has abounded,” said Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s attorney. “A stay is necessary to remove the artificial and arbitrary time pressure created by scheduling an innocent man’s execution while he has appeals pending.”
Roberson was convicted under the now widely discredited “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS) hypothesis, which prosecutors used to argue that Nikki Roberson, his daughter, died from intentional abuse. In the years since his 2003 conviction, dozens of scientists and legal experts have criticized the scientific reliability of SBS, and at least 40 parents and caregivers nationwide have been exonerated after wrongful convictions under the same theory.
Roberson’s attorneys contend that Nikki’s death was caused not by trauma but by a combination of undiagnosed pneumonia, respiratory-suppressing medications that are no longer approved for children her age, and a short fall from bed the night before her collapse. Nikki had a history of chronic illness and had been prescribed Phenergan and Codeine in the days before her death—medications that can cause respiratory depression in young children.
In a rare development, Brian Wharton, the lead detective who initially investigated the case and testified for the prosecution at trial, has since reversed his position and now supports Roberson’s innocence claim.
“We made a mistake in this case,” Wharton said. “There’s no shame in trying to correct that error now, but it would be shameful for Texas to execute an innocent man.”
The evidence supporting Roberson’s innocence includes new expert opinions from leading pathologists, radiologists, and pediatric specialists. Dr. Michael Laposata, a nationally recognized expert on blood disorders, concluded that Nikki’s symptoms could be explained by Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC), a condition triggered by sepsis that causes internal bleeding. This would account for the bruising and internal bleeding used at trial to support the abuse allegation.
Ten additional pathologists submitted a joint statement supporting Roberson’s habeas application, stating that the original autopsy was riddled with errors and failed to consider alternative explanations for Nikki’s condition.
In February 2025, Roberson’s legal team filed a “subsequent application” for habeas corpus relief under Articles 11.071 and 11.073 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, citing this newly discovered evidence and recent scientific developments. In particular, they highlighted the CCA’s October 2024 ruling in Ex Parte Roark, which overturned another SBS conviction based on testimony from the same state expert, Dr. Janet Squires, who testified in Roberson’s trial. The court in Roark found that the SBS science used at trial was unreliable and that newer scientific understanding would likely yield an acquittal.
The emergency motion filed Wednesday urges the court to apply Roark’s reasoning to Roberson’s case. “The Roark and Roberson cases are indistinguishable in all material respects,” the motion states. Yet no court has evaluated Roberson’s case in light of Roark, despite the pending habeas petition.
In addition to the motion for stay, Roberson’s counsel has filed a motion for oral argument, emphasizing the need for transparency and due process. The filing argues that oral argument would clarify conflicting decisions across SBS cases in Texas and serve the public interest given the gravity of a potential wrongful execution. It also cites Texas Family Code section 261.3017, which now grants parents accused of child abuse the right to a second medical opinion, underscoring how the law has evolved since Roberson’s 2003 conviction.
Roberson, who is on the autism spectrum and has a ninth-grade education, has spent more than two decades on death row. His post-conviction efforts have been marked by procedural hurdles and failures by court-appointed counsel to investigate his claims. His current legal team contends that the courts have yet to meaningfully review the full record of scientific and factual evidence pointing to his innocence.
The recent change in state representation, from the Anderson County District Attorney’s Office to the Office of the Attorney General under Ken Paxton, has added to concerns about the adversarial integrity of the case. The OAG’s immediate move to schedule a new execution date—just months after Roberson’s February filing—prompted what his lawyers described as “unseemly pressure” on the Court of Criminal Appeals.
“We objected to the setting of a date because we have a pending appeal sitting at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is a higher court… Why should a lower court be setting an execution date to put pressure on a higher court, which has been considering this overwhelming body of evidence of innocence since February?” Sween added.
The filings also reference legislative testimony and reports from 2024 showing the state’s failure to apply Article 11.073 as intended. The House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence held three hearings examining Roberson’s case and concluded it “highlighted not just an individual injustice, but the unfulfilled promise of what was intended to be a pioneering Texas law.”
