Robert Roberson was calm and hopeful as he pondered his mortality and whether he could again avoid becoming the first person in the U.S. executed for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

With days to go before his scheduled Oct. 16 execution, Roberson maintained his innocence in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the east Texas city of Palestine. He is set to die by lethal injection nearly a year to the day after a group of Texas lawmakers, who say he is innocent, secured an extraordinary last-minute court reprieve as Roberson waited outside the death chamber in Huntsville.

Roberson said he was placing his hopes for another execution stay in the hands of his lawyers, his supporters and God.

“I’m not going to stress out and stuff because I know God has it, you know. He’s in control. No matter what, God’s in control, you know, and he does have the last say, you know,” Roberson, 58, told The Associated Press last week as he sat behind a glass partition in the visiting area of the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where Texas' male death row inmates are housed.

During an hourlong interview, Roberson said he thinks about his daughter every day and what kind of life she would have today.

Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued he hit his daughter and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma and that she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome. Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.

The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s attorneys have argued his undiagnosed autism helped convict him as authorities and medical personnel felt he didn’t act like a concerned parent because his flat affect was seen as a sign of guilt.

AP video by Lekan Oyekanmi