Robert Roberson: The Texas Supreme Court stops the execution of a person convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter on the final minute | EUROtoday

Robert Roberson will stay alive in the intervening time. The Texas Supreme Court ordered this Thursday evening to cease on the final minute the execution of the prisoner, convicted of the homicide of his two-year-old daughter in 2002. The highest court docket within the state has dominated on a case that has been rejected by each the Supreme Court and the Texas Circuit of Appeals. Roberson, 57, has a big group of supporters, together with Democratic and Republican politicians, who consider that he was sentenced to demise in a trial with scientific proof that has not stood the take a look at of time.

Roberson, who has all the time defended his innocence, was going to grow to be this Thursday the primary executed within the historical past of the United States for a case of shaken child syndrome, a kind of kid abuse that may trigger mind accidents and even demise in a minor. whether it is shaken. The syndrome has been on the heart of debate amongst specialists. Voices from the medical group have been skeptical that there’s conclusive scientific proof to substantiate the syndrome, which was alerted previously by organizations such because the WHO. Some scientists advise towards his analysis being utilized in legal proceedings that result in demise row.

The case that has Roberson on demise row started in 2002. His daughter Nikki, who was born with power respiratory issues, had been sick that starting of the 12 months. He had a fever and for temporary moments he stopped respiratory and turned blue. Within per week, Roberson took her to the pediatrician and to the emergency providers of the hospital in Palestine, the Texas metropolis the place they lived. On January 31 of that 12 months, the lady stopped respiratory and her father took her to the well being heart once more. He acquired a cardiac therapeutic massage, which revived his coronary heart, however not his mind. She was taken off the ventilator the subsequent day. Her father grew to become the principle suspect after docs carried out a CT scan on the minor, the place they discovered a swollen mind stuffed with blood. They suspected little one abuse.

“They accused me because I couldn’t explain what happened to him,” Roberson informed NPR. The inmate is on the autism spectrum which had not been recognized on the time of the lady’s demise and has a low IQ. The docs on the hospital have been those who known as the police and accused him of Nikki’s demise after the person confirmed no emotion. However, the lead detective on the case for the Palestine Police Department, Brian Wharton, admits that authorities by no means pursued any line of investigation apart from shaken child syndrome. Wharton, who has grow to be an evangelical pastor, is one in every of Roberson’s defenders and believes the authorized system failed.

Wharton will not be the one one who believes this. Legislators Joe Moody and Jeff Leach, Democrats and Republicans respectively, are additionally main a marketing campaign to assessment the method that led to Roberson’s conviction. “For more than 20 years, Robert Roberson has spent 23 and a half hours of each day in solitary confinement in a cell as small as a Texan closet waiting to be heard,” they mentioned.

Among the prisoner’s defenders can be John Grisham, best-selling writer and anti-death penalty activist. He has argued that there are enough technological advances to permit a brand new analysis of Nikki’s demise and never that of a syndrome that has grow to be out of date for contemporary science. Although the lady did have accidents to her cranium that might have been attributable to an assault, new proof reveals that the minor could have died from problems associated to extreme pneumonia.

The execution was to happen at 6:00 p.m. (Central United States Time). Roberson awaited his destiny in a cell subsequent to the room the place he was to obtain the deadly cocktail intravenously. The defendant’s supporters have been awaiting phrase from Governor Greg Abbott, who has the authority to postpone demise for about 30 days. But the president mentioned nothing. He has solely stopped a single execution within the virtually 10 years he has led the native authorities. He has additionally not spoken publicly concerning the case although Sonia Sotomayor, the decide of the federal Supreme Court, ordered him to quickly cease the execution.

Roberson had requested for clemency from the state company accountable for the jail system, which denied the movement. The six council members voted 6-0 to not transmute the demise penalty into life imprisonment. The federal Supreme Court as the best court docket in legal issues refused to cease the execution. The phrase that has saved Roberson’s life for the second got here from a courtroom that not often fails in legal instances.