Autistic dad hours away from execution after ‘convicted by junk science’

Execution is looming for an autistic begetter from Texas who is astatine the centre of a arguable ‘shaken babe syndrome’ case.

Robert Roberson is scheduled to person a lethal injection astatine the authorities penitentiary successful Huntsville aft spending 20 years successful situation for the execution of his two-year-old daughter.

Lawmakers reason his innocence amid allegations that his condemnation was secured based connected outdated aesculapian evidence.

If his condemnation is carried out, the 57-year-old would go the archetypal person in the state to beryllium executed based connected the mostly discredited ‘shaken babe syndrome’ hypothesis.

Roberson brought his girl Nikki Curtis to infirmary successful the metropolis of Palestine connected January 31, 2002. He told doctors that she was sick with fever and had fallen from a bed.

Court documents cited by Time state that astatine the hospital, she was ‘not breathing and had a bluish colour to her skin.’

The toddler was past brought to a infirmary successful Dallas via helicopter, wherever she was pronounced dead.

Staff raised suspicions of abuse, based connected Nikki’s wounds, which were accordant with shaken babe syndrome – a signifier of kid maltreatment successful which a babe is shaken repeatedly, causing their encephalon to bounce against their skull.

Though the syndrome has been credited as legitimate by galore pediatricians, the American Association of Pediatrics acknowledged successful 2020 that it has been ‘misinterpreted’ by immoderate successful the ineligible and aesculapian circles.

The Innocence Project said astir Roberson: ‘He is an guiltless begetter with autism who has spent implicit 20 years connected decease enactment successful Texas for a transgression that ne'er occurred.

‘Roberson was committed to being a contiguous begetter to his chronically sick two-year-old girl Nikki erstwhile helium was granted custody successful November 2001.

‘Tragically, Nikki passed distant from anterior aesculapian conditions aft a abbreviated autumn from bed, and helium was wrongfully convicted of her death.’

His lawyers and immoderate aesculapian experts accidental his girl died not from maltreatment but from complications related to pneumonia.

‘He is an guiltless antheral and we’re precise adjacent to sidesplitting him for thing helium did not do,’ said Brian Wharton, the pb detective with Palestine constabulary who investigated Nikki’s death. 

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Roberson’s bid for clemency connected Wednesday. He has asked the US Supreme Court to contented a enactment of execution.

In a effect to Roberson’s Supreme Court petition, the Texas lawyer general’s bureau said that he had failed to beryllium his ‘actual innocence,’ and that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had ruled that Nikki’s injuries were ‘inconsistent with a abbreviated autumn from a furniture oregon complications from a virus.’

Roberson’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the aesculapian mentation utilized to convict him in 2003 ‘has since been wholly discredited.’

‘Not lone was maltreatment presumed successful 2003,’ his lawyers wrote, ‘but Roberson’s blunted impact and aloof mannerisms, manifestations of his Autism Spectrum Disorder mistaken for a deficiency of care, led aesculapian unit and instrumentality enforcement alike to presume culpability.’

Roberson is scheduled to beryllium executed aboriginal today.

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