Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson is set to be executed on Oct. 16, a judge announced during a hearing on Wednesday.
Attorney General Ken Paxton requested the hearing to discuss a new execution date after numerous delays.
Roberson, who was convicted of capital murder in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, was present at the hearing and sat next to his attorney.
His appearance in the Smith County courtroom surprised many of those inside who were not expecting the Texas Death Row inmate to be transferred from a Southeast Texas prison.
The 58-year-old watched his attorney make a passionate plea to a judge asking to hold off setting a new execution date until pending appeals can be ruled on by higher courts over whether Roberson deserves a new trial.
Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, said she will seek a stay of the execution.
“Texans should be outraged that the court has scheduled an execution date for a demonstrably innocent man,” she said. “Everyone who has taken the time to look at the evidence of Robert Roberson’s innocence—including the lead detective, one of the jurors, a range of highly qualified experts, and a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers—has reached the same conclusion: Nikki’s death was a terrible tragedy. Robert did not kill her. There was no crime.”
Prosecutors alleged that Roberson killed the child by violently shaking her — a diagnosis commonly referred to at the time as shaken baby syndrome.
In its latest appeal filed in February, Roberson’s legal team said that based on new evidence, “no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder; and unreliable and outdated scientific and medical evidence was material to his conviction.”
The new evidence includes statements from pathologists that state the girl’s death was not a homicide and who question the reliability of conclusions by the medical examiner on the cause of death.
“You ask why now there’s approximately 200 people on death row in Texas and there’s one pending execution date,” said Sween. “There’s no reason to be setting a date for Mr. Roberson, who is among the few who has live appeals on a very serious issue.”
Roberson was in a holding cell on Oct. 17, 2024, a few feet away from America’s busiest death chamber in Huntsville, waiting to receive a lethal injection when he was granted an execution stay after a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for him to testify before a House committee several days after he was scheduled to die.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled in November that although the subpoena was valid, it could not be used to circumvent a scheduled execution.
Roberson never testified before the House committee as Paxton’s office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers.
After Roberson’s execution date was set
Roberson’s attorney spoke to reporters outside the courthouse with a number of exonerated murderers standing behind her.
“It’s not a freak occurrence, we’ve had 200 people in this country exonerated from death rows because they subsequently have been found innocent,” Sween said. “Truth is gonna come out, Robert’s gonna come out on top.”
While Roberson supporters plan to continue their efforts to spare his life, Dallas County has spent $20,000 for an independent review of the victim’s autopsy, which was conducted by the Dallas County Medical Examiners’ office.
County Judge Clay Jenkins said that review is ongoing.
