Autistic Robert Roberson was sentenced in 2002 • Famous author turned against the sentence
The Texas Supreme Court decided at the last minute to stay the execution of 57-year-old Robert Roberson, an autistic man convicted in 2002 of shaking his daughter so hard she died.
“Few cases require more urgent action than one in which the accused has demonstrated his factual innocence,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a lengthy statement.
The death penalty was scheduled to be carried out on the night of Friday, Swedish time, but at the last moment the execution was postponed, after a committee within the state senate in Texas questioned the reasonableness of the death sentence. The Texas Supreme Court then upheld the request, after the state’s appeals court earlier in the day denied it.
The convicted 57-year-old was only diagnosed with autism in 2018. When he entered the hospital with his two-year-old daughter in 2002, doctors became suspicious because the father appeared to show no emotion. Since his conviction two decades ago, he has maintained his innocence.
The man’s lawyers claim that “new, overwhelming, medical and scientific” evidence shows that the chronically ill girl died of pneumonia, which also caused blood poisoning. The doctors assumed child abuse without finding out the girl’s medical history and misinterpreted the father’s behavior, according to the lawyers.
Many have objected to the execution
Many have become involved in the case, including 30 scientists and medical experts who have shown their support for medical reports cited by the man’s lawyers. 80 legislators in Texas, several groups that work for the rights of autistic people and the famous author John Grisham have taken a stand against the execution to be carried out.
“Few cases require more urgent action than one in which the accused has shown that he is actually innocent,” US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a lengthy statement, in which she also wrote that the Texas governor is the one who has the power to stop the execution.
– This injustice is blood on Abbott and Anderson Country. This is not a legal execution, it is murder, the man’s sister-in-law told CNN.
One of three people on death row in Texas
The man is sentenced in Andersson Country, and Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, has limited to issuing a one-time 30-day stay of execution on the execution, to allow court appeals to play out.
18 people have been executed in Texas since 1973 and three people, including the 57-year-old man, are on death row in the state. To date, no person has been executed for shaking violence against a child in the United States.