ANDERSON COUNTY, Texas — A court hearing that could stop the execution of an East Texas man on death row is set for next week.
Robert Roberson III, 57, was sentenced to death in 2003 in connection with the death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis. He has claimed his innocence for roughly two decades. He is set to be executed in a week's time on Oct. 17.
This week, his lawyers said a hearing will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 10 a.m. in Anderson County in an effort to make the order issuing his execution null and void.
Roberson's attorneys' latest effort to stop execution is attempting to remove retired Judge Deborah Oakes Evans from overseeing the case. Evans signed the warrant that set Roberson's execution date.
Roberson's attorney Gretchen Sween said they are concerned Roberson never had a fair hearing before the execution date was set back in September. They hope that if the execution date is off the table, they can get back into court and show new evidence.
But she said it starts with Tuesday's hearing. Sween argues Evans wasn’t following the proper procedure and she should be removed under Texas law due to impartiality.
Judge Alfonso Charles, presiding judge of the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region, will preside over the hearing to decide if Evans should be removed from the case and he could decide to take away the "unlawful" execution warrant.
"A lack of transparency, really around how this particular judge made these decisions, and if the new judge agrees with us, the execution warrant would be voided," Sween said.
According to Roberson's legal team, his daughter Nikki died from an illness, accident and medical error, not because of any abuse.
Roberson was arrested in 2002 based on a doctor’s "Shaken Baby Syndrome" hypothesis. The defense team said Brian Wharton, lead detective in charge of investigating Nikki’s death, has come to believe that Roberson is innocent.
"Robert's daughter falling off a playscape. They land with sufficient force in just the wrong way. It can cause this same condition that was found in his daughter, and it can take hours or even days to develop," Sween said. "So the old 'shaken baby' idea was whoever was with the child when they collapsed must be guilty of a horrible crime, because it would have happened instantly."
Sween also says the same set of conditions is the similar to pneumonia.
"Nikki's lungs were highly diseased. She had two different kinds of pneumonia ravishing her lungs, and she had been extremely sick the whole week before. And Robert had taken her to the doctor, but all of this evidence about her condition and her recent illness and her lifelong medical conditions was not investigated."
On Sept. 17, Roberson filed a petition seeking clemency from Gov. Greg Abbott, which documents submitted by the defense say is supported by many.
Additionally, 86 Texas state representatives have signed a letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Abbott urging clemency for Roberson. Some of those same lawmakers met with Roberson at the prison unit in Livingston to pray with him.
"Many people across the political spectrum have been raising concerns about the case, speaking out, and that has certainly been a comfort to Robert in a very, very stressful time," Sween said.
State Rep. Jay Dean, R-Longview, who represents Gregg, Harrison, and Marion counties, and state Rep. Jill Dutton, R-Ben Wheeler, who represents Hopkins, Hunt, Van Zandt counties, are among the 86 representatives.
"If there's some evidence that's come forward, scientific evidence that shows that two things, one, then it disputes the phenomenon called baby shaking, but also that the child had other physiological complications. That's what the child died from," Dean said.
On Oct. 7, the attorneys filed a motion to stay the execution with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
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