Robert Roberson photographed through plexiglass at TDCJ Polunsky Unit.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is pictured speaking at The Conservative Political Action Conference in 2024.

An appeals court has issued a stay of execution for a man who was set to become the first in the nation to be put to death over shaken baby syndrome.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the ruling on Thursday, Oct. 9, one week before Robert Roberson's scheduled execution for the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki.

The appeals court found that Roberson deserves a new hearing to present evidence about shaken baby syndrome, which has been increasingly discredited in recent years.

Roberson has won unprecedented support from many corners of Texas and the nation with his innocence claims, including dozens of Republican lawmakers, the lead detective in his case and bestselling author John Grisham. The state attorney general's office has been pushing for the execution, arguing that Nikki had blunt-force injuries beyond shaken baby syndrome.

The court rejected that and wrote that the government's case was "inseparably intertwined with Shaken Baby Syndrome as it was medically understood more than 20 years ago."

Because of our "deeper understanding" of shaken baby syndrome, the court found that "certain assumptions and conclusions that were once thought to be true may not be."

"A death sentence is clearly final and, once carried out, hindsight is useless," the court wrote. "We should require the highest standards of accuracy so that we can act with a reliable degree of certainty."

Roberson's attorney, Gretchen Sween, said in a statement that she's looking forward to another day in court to present evidence that shows Roberson's daughter "died from natural and accidental causes, not shaking or other abuse."

"Robert adored Nikki, whose death was a tragedy, a horror compounded by Robert’s wrongful conviction that devastated his whole family," Sween said. "We are confident that an objective review of the science and medical evidence will show there was no crime.”

The Texas Attorney General's Office, which pushed to get Roberson's execution scheduled following another stay last year, did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment about the ruling.

What was Robert Roberson convicted of?

Roberson was convicted of killing his daughter, Nikki, in their home in the small East Texas city of Palestine in 2002.

Roberson reported hearing Nikki cry and finding that she had fallen out of bed. After soothing her, he said, they both went back to sleep. Later, when Roberson woke again, he found Nikki wasn’t breathing, and her lips had turned blue. At the emergency room, doctors observed symptoms consistent with brain death, and she was pronounced dead the next day.

Doctors and investigators at the time jumped to the conclusion that Nikki died of shaken baby syndrome, even though the toddler also had several grave physical ailments: She had pneumonia in both lungs and undiagnosed sepsis, and she was on prescription opioids that are now banned for children.

A jury convicted Roberson of capital murder and sentenced him to death.

Lead detective in case: 'We got it wrong'

Brian Wharton, the lead investigator in Roberson's case, told USA TODAY that confirmation bias and several misunderstandings led him to believe that Roberson killed his daughter.

For one, when Roberson brought Nikki to the hospital, nurses, doctors, and investigators observed that he seemed to be devoid of emotion, something Wharton looked at as a red flag at the time but now understands as behavior common among people who are autistic, like Roberson.

Investigators dismissed Roberson's explanation that Nikki had fallen from her bed that night, and Wharton said medical staff didn't divulge the other conditions she had.

"We got it wrong," he said. "We had incomplete and bad information, so the system got it wrong."

Wharton has since apologized to Roberson in person and meets with him monthly on Texas' death row in Livingston, just north of Houston.

"We have conversations about our lives, our faith, our families, and our hopes," Wharton said. "He's my friend."

Republican lawmakers have been fighting for Roberson

Among those who have been fighting for a reprieve for Roberson in recent years are conservative lawmakers in the state who are in favor of the death penalty but believe in Roberson's innocence. They successfully stopped Roberson's execution last year and were flabbergasted when it was rescheduled this year without a new hearing.

Two of the Republican lawmakers, Reps. Jeff Leach and Lacey Hull, met with Roberson on Oct. 8 at the prison where he's housed north of Houston. Leach told USA TODAY that he and Roberson hugged for about 30 seconds and held hands and prayed in a circle with Hull, two Democratic lawmakers, a chaplain, and an assistant warden.

He expressed frustration that the execution was still scheduled as of Oct. 8, saying, "There seems to be this bloodlust for this execution."

The Republican said that legislators receive a lot of requests from death row inmates to review their cases, but Roberson's stands out among them all.

"It's not just one thing that was wrong, it's not just one bit of evidence, it's not just one witness whose testimony is discredited, it's literally every stage from the second he brought her to the emergency room to today," Leach said. "The system has failed him and Nikki virtually at every turn. I've never seen anything like it."

Last-minute reprieve: How Texas lawmakers stopped Robert Roberson's execution in 2024

State officials have stood behind conviction, execution

The Texas Attorney General's Office has stood by Roberson's conviction and execution in multiple court filings, arguing that Nikki had other injuries beyond what shaking could have caused, that shaken baby syndrome is not junk science, and that the level of involvement by lawmakers in the case has been inappropriate.

Roberson "brutally murdered his own child," the attorney general's office argued in one court filing. "It can be inferred from the evidence that the night Nikki died, she was crying because her mother was not there. When she would not stop crying, Roberson shook little Nikki to make her stop crying, as he had done many times before."

They cite testimony from two young girls in Roberson's home who they say testified that they had previously seen Roberson shake Nikki.

Sween, Roberson's attorney, refuted the state's position as lies and a manipulation of the facts, saying it comes down to politicians wanting to look tough on crime for voters.

"It shouldn’t be a matter of who can inflame people, it should be: What does the objective medical evidence say?" she said. "And if you still think you have a case, state of Texas, why not have a new trial? Why are they pushing him to the gurney?"

In a social media thread last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted that Leach was among those lying about Roberson's case and criticized "eleventh-hour, one-sided, extrajudicial stunts" to interfere with Roberson's execution.

"A few legislators have grossly interfered with the justice system by disregarding the separation of powers outlined in the State Constitution," Paxton wrote. "They have created a Constitutional crisis on behalf of a man who beat his two-year-old daughter to death."

What happens now?

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has sent the case back to the trial court for new hearings. The timing on that is unclear but could take months or years.

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas court stops Robert Roberson's execution over questions about shaken baby syndrome

Reporting by Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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