Texas is preparing to execute an innocent man who is like “Forrest Gump,” his lawyer has said.
Robert Roberson, who is autistic, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on October 17.
He was sentenced to death in 2003 for the killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after prosecutors argued that she died from injuries caused by being violently shaken, also known as shaken baby syndrome.
Roberson has maintained his innocence while on death row and his attorneys and supporters are seeking to halt his execution, arguing that his conviction was based on science that has been discredited.
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Roberson had taken his daughter to hospital in 2002 after saying he woke up and found her unconscious. Doctors at the time were skeptical of his claim that Curtis had fallen off the bed while sleeping, and some testified at his trial that her symptoms aligned with those of shaken baby syndrome. The syndrome first emerged as a medical hypothesis in the 1970s, but courts have repeatedly found the theory is not scientifically valid.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week dismissed a motion to halt the execution and new application for relief without reviewing the merits of Roberson’s claim. His attorneys are now seeking clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott.
In a clemency petition, Roberson’s attorneys argue that experts have largely debunked that Curtis’ symptoms aligned with shaken baby syndrome and that his demeanor was wrongfully used against him when he brought his daughter to the hospital.
“The state of Texas is preparing, in essence, to execute Forrest Gump,” Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween, said, according to TV station WFAA.
Sween told Newsweek that Roberson “is a sweet, gentle man who has maintained hope during over 20 years of wrongful incarceration by relying on his sincere and simple religious faith.
“He has a life-long developmental disability—Autism Spectrum Disorder—that was not properly assessed until 2018, although his impairments are obvious. The way symptoms of his disability were unwittingly used against him when he brought his daughter to the ER in a medical crisis is one reason why multiple groups that advocate for people with autism are supporting his petition for clemency, including the National Autism Society.”
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Abbott’s office have been contacted for comment via email.
BREAKING: #RobertRoberson, an autistic father wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Texas based on the debunked “shaken baby syndrome” hypothesis, applies for clemency to stop his Oct. 17 scheduled execution. https://t.co/jmfdyx0uE0
— Innocence Project (@innocence) September 17, 2024
The clemency petition details post-conviction testimony from Casey Brownlow, who knew Roberson when they were both in seventh grade. Brownlow said his exchanges were Roberson were limited because he was “an outsider”: who was “different from the rest of us” and “almost like Forrest Gump.”
Forrest Gump is a 1986 novel about an Alabama man with a low IQ that was later adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks.
The petition argues that when Roberson took Curtis to the hospital in February 2002, medical personnel “rushed to judge him based on incorrect presumptions and ignorance of her actual medical condition” and failed to rule out other medical explanations for Curtis’ symptoms, such as pneumonia.
Then, law enforcement accepted the assumption of doctors and did not investigate further. Another mistake, the petition argues, is that hospital staff and law enforcement wrongfully viewed Roberson’s demeanor as “reflecting a lack of feeling regarding his daughter’s plight—a far cry from the truth.”
While Robertson’s family and close friends were long aware that he had a disability of some kind, the petition states, he was not diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder until 2018.
Curtis’ death “was not a crime—unless it is a crime for a parent to be unable to explain complex medical problems that even trained medical professionals failed to understand at the time,” the petition states. “We know that Nikki’s lungs were severely infected and straining for oxygen — for days or even weeks before her collapse.”
A bipartisan group of more than 80 Texas lawmakers as well as medical experts, death penalty attorneys, autism advocacy organizations, a former detective on the case, novelist John Grisham and others have called on the parole board and Abbott to halt Roberson’s execution.
“I don’t know how much clearer I can say this,” Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat, said during a press conference at the state Capitol on Tuesday.”We shouldn’t be executing someone when there’s this much doubt about whether a crime was even committed.”
