Robert Roberson in court for the review of his 2003 conviction in the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in Palestine on August 14, 2018.We’re testing using AI-powered tools to provide an audio version of this story. While this audio recording is machine-generated, the story was written by human journalists.
The Court of Criminal Appeals in 2016 stopped his execution and sent the case back to the trial court after the scientific consensus around shaken baby syndrome diagnosesThe Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision was largely a product of a 2013 state law, dubbed the “junk science law,” which allows Texas courts to overturn a conviction when the scientific evidence used to reach a verdict has since changed or been discredited.
“It is irrefutable that Nikki’s medical records show that she was severely ill during the last week of her life,” Roberson’s attorneys wrote, noting that in the week before her death, Roberson had taken Nikki to the emergency room because she had been coughing, wheezing and struggling with diarrhea for several days, and to her pediatrician’s office, where her temperature came in at 104.5 degrees.