By Dakin Andone, Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough, CNN

Livingston, Texas (CNN) — A Texas court has again granted a stay of execution to death row inmate Robert Roberson, who has long claimed he is innocent in the murder of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis, saying his conviction based on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome was flawed.

The ruling Thursday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halts Roberson’s execution scheduled to take place October 16, which his attorneys have said would be the first in the US based on an allegation of shaken baby syndrome.

The appeals court sent Roberson’s case back to his trial court for further review after years of unsuccessful appeals by the inmate and his attorneys. Ahead of his last execution date last October, state and federal courts, including the US Supreme Court, declined to stop his execution, and the Texas parole board rejected his plea for clemency.

In a death row interview with CNN Wednesday, Roberson again said he was innocent, but that he was at peace thanks to his faith.

“I’m not scared to die, but I’m not ready to die yet, you know,” he said.

“No matter what happens, I’m going home to a free world,” Roberson said. “I’m going home to be with the Lord.”

Texas prison officials say the unit warden delivered the news to Roberson shortly after the court ruled to halt the upcoming execution.

The order Thursday says the court found Roberson satisfied his claim that he should get relief under the state’s 2013 “junk science” law, which allows people to challenge their convictions if there is new scientific evidence.

In sending the case back to Roberson’s trial court for review, the appeals court cited a ruling it delivered last year, when it granted a new trial to a man, Andrew Roark, who was convicted of injury to a child based on a similar allegation of shaken baby syndrome. In that case, the court found scientific evidence had evolved and that it was “more likely than not” Roark, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison, would not have been convicted.

There remains consensus among pediatricians that the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome – now considered a subset of abusive head trauma – is legitimate. But Roberson’s supporters argue there are other explanations for Nikki’s death that don’t involve abuse: Shifts in the understanding of the causes of symptoms Nikki displayed shortly before her death, along with mounting new evidence, prove his innocence or at least warrant a new trial, they say.

On Thursday, Roberson’s attorney celebrated the ruling, but acknowledged there is still work to be done.

“We have won a battle, but we have certainly not won the war,” Gretchen Sween told reporters. “But quite literally, our Robert lives to fight another day, and that really is a triumph.”

Roberson’s execution last year was only stopped following a remarkable maneuver from a group of state lawmakers, who subpoenaed the inmate’s testimony, prompting the Texas Supreme Court to issue a temporary stay. In the year since, Roberson and his attorneys had hoped to secure a new trial, but a new execution date was set even as appeals remained pending.

State Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican who orchestrated the House committee subpoena last year, commended the Texas appeals court judges, stressing his belief that Roberson has “never been given a fair trial.”

“It is most incumbent on those of us who support capital punishment to ensure that potentially innocent people are never subject to it,” Harrison said on X.
“I will not stop fighting for justice and to ensure my children and the next generation do not inherit a state where the government can deprive Texans of life and liberty absent due process and fair trials.”

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took over representation of the state in Roberson’s proceedings this summer and has been fighting for the execution to proceed. In a statement last year, his office accused “a coalition of activists and State legislators” of “interfering with the justice system.”

“They have attempted to mislead the public by falsely claiming that Roberson was unfairly convicted through ‘junk science’ concerning ‘shaken baby syndrome,’” the statement said.

CNN has reached out to the office and that of Gov. Greg Abbott for comment.

The case of Robert Roberson

Roberson’s case dates back to January 2002, when he brought his daughter to a Palestine, Texas, hospital. Doctors determined Nikki to be the victim of abuse and transferred her to a hospital in Dallas, where she was later taken off life support.

“That changed my life forever, you know, when I lost her,” Roberson told CNN Wednesday. “And I don’t wish that even on my worst enemy.”

Roberson told investigators he and Nikki had fallen asleep the night before in the same bed. He said he woke overnight to a cry from Nikki and found she had fallen off the bed. Roberson kept her awake a while longer, he said, before they fell back asleep. When he woke later that morning, she was unresponsive.

Roberson’s supporters say Nikki, a sickly child who visited the doctor’s office or emergency room dozens of times in her short life, had undiagnosed pneumonia. Other complications – including prescribed medicine they say further suppressed Nikki’s breathing – caused the symptoms doctors used to diagnose abuse, Roberson’s attorneys say.

Shaken baby syndrome is now considered a type of abusive head trauma, a broader term that emerged around 2009 to reflect it can be caused by actions other than shaking, like impacts to a child’s head. It is a leading cause of child abuse deaths for children under 5, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Roberson’s attorneys and medical experts they cite say the evidence shows he did not shake his child, nor beat her, as the state has claimed. On Thursday, Sween called those allegations “grotesque falsehoods,” pointing in part to CT scans discovered only in 2018 that she says show Nikki had just one bump on the back of her head.

Suspicion of Roberson was fueled further, his attorneys say, because of his undiagnosed autism. Medical staff at the hospital and police misjudged his demeanor as uncaring and evidence of guilt, his attorneys say, arguing his behavior is explained by his 2018 autism diagnosis.

“I always in my life, I knew I was different, but I never was diagnosed,” Roberson said.

Former Palestine, Texas, detective Brian Wharton has told CNN the guidance of doctors and Roberson’s demeanor led investigators to focus on the abuse allegations without considering other possibilities.

‘I was hoping to be home by now’

There is no timeline for Roberson’s trial court to review his case, Sween told reporters in a virtual news conference Thursday. But she is “determined to push this as fast as possible.”

“Robert has been waiting for 23 years already,” she said, noting she has already reached out to the attorney general’s office in hopes of scheduling a hearing.

Thursday’s ruling was celebrated by Roberson’s supporters, who in recent weeks reprised last year’s campaign to save his life. His supporters include Wharton, parents wrongfully convicted of child abuse, medical and forensic experts, advocates for the autism community and the Texas lawmakers who stopped his execution last year – staunch, pro-death penalty conservatives among them.

Republican Rep. Lacey Hull, a supporter of the death penalty, said Wednesday if he was executed, “justice will not be served at all.”

“It would be a stain on this state, a stain on this nation,” she said at a news conference.

On Wednesday, Roberson thought back to last year, when he was pacing back and forth in a cell, moments from being put to death.

“I asked the Lord in to intervene. ‘Please have mercy and grace on me and … please help me,’” he said. He had already packed his belongings on death row in Livingston, Texas, and made the hour-long journey to Huntsville, where the execution chamber sits. He’d had his last meal, pasta with meat sauce.

Last year’s stay, he said, was a “miracle,” he told CNN.

Still, “I was hoping to be home by now,” he said.