Texas Appeals Court Overturns ‘Shaken Baby’ Conviction Prior to Execution Date in Another Contested Case

As the state of Texas prepares to conduct the nation’s first execution based on evidence of what used to be called “shaken baby syndrome,” an appeals court has overturned a conviction in a separate, similar case.

The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled On Wednesday, Andrew Roark, a Dallas man sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2000 in a shocked baby case, deserved a new trial because it is unlikely a jury would convict him today if they heard current scientific testimony. Two of the state’s witnesses at Roark’s trial later recanted portions of their testimony regarding the unlikelihood of accidental or natural causes for the symptoms they observed.

“We find that scientific knowledge has evolved regarding SBS and its application in the (Roark) case,” the court wrote. “Furthermore, we have concluded that, upon further investigation, the experts would have expressed a different opinion on several issues at a trial today – some have already done so. The admissible scientific testimony at today’s trial would likely lead to an acquittal .”

There is probably no one else in the country more interested in the case, besides Roark, than Robert Roberson, a death row inmate from Texas who will be executed on October 17. Roberson would be the first person in the US to be executed based on evidence. from what used to be called ‘shaken baby syndrome’, now officially called abusive head trauma (AHT).

Roberson’s attorneys have filed another appeal this week asked the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to reconsider its previous decisions denying him relief in light of Roark’s case, especially since both trials included testimony from the same expert witness, Janet Squires – a certified expert in child abuse – pediatrics who has testified in hundreds of child abuse investigations.

“The same prosecutor testified in both trials and made many identical statements about how tremors had to be the primary explanation for the child’s brain disorder, while science has since shown that many things, including natural disease progression and accidental falls from impact with the head, could cause the same circumstances,” Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s attorney, said in a news release. “The flaws in the expert testimony are virtually identical.”

If Rode detailed in one function in Roberson’s case in August, he was convicted in 2003 of murdering his two-year-old daughter Nikki and sentenced to death. He claimed his daughter fell out of bed in the middle of the night, but he calmed her down and eventually got her back to sleep. He says he woke up later to find she had stopped breathing and was turning blue. Roberson took his daughter to the hospital, where she was declared brain dead and eventually taken off life support. Medical examiners discovered a trio of internal head conditions that were considered at the time compelling evidence of violent shaking and impact.

Roberson’s attorneys argue that AHT amounts to junk science and that the scientific consensus surrounding it has changed dramatically since Roberson’s conviction. His lawyers also argued in a stay of execution petition filed this summer that they had uncovered previously secret medical records showing that Roberson’s daughter died of severe viral and bacterial pneumonia, rather than trauma from tremors or abuse.

Among those who now believe Roberson is innocent are the former detective who arrested him as well as novelist John Grisham, who wrote a function on Roberson’s case D magazine last month.

However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his last call. It ruled that Roberson’s claims did not meet the standards for filing a subsequent petition for injunctive relief habeas corpus– Roberson was previously granted a stay of execution and additional evidentiary hearings in 2016, but refused relief – and the court rejected Roberson’s new request without considering its merits.

The state of Texas argues in a brief opposition to Roberson’s new motion to reconsider that Roark’s case is “easily distinguishable” despite the testimony of the same expert witness. Roberson’s conviction was based on tremors findings, according to the state And multiple blunt force impacts, in addition to witness statements that he was short-tempered and violent.

“The experts – supported by the autopsy report – determined that Nikki died as a result of the blunt force injuries (Roberson) inflicted on her, combined with shaking,” the state letter says. “None of the opinions of these experts have been retracted in whole or in part.”

However, the trial court’s opinion quashing Roark’s conviction notes that the “State theorized that appellant caused serious bodily harm to the young victim by violently shaking her and possibly striking her with or against something respectively referred to as Shaken Baby Syndrome and Shaken Impact Syndrome.”

Squires testified in Roark’s case that it was possible the victim “had suffered a shock and a blow.”

Roberson’s execution would take place amid an intense courtroom debate over the reliability of AHT evidence. Prosecutors and child abuse specialists say there is broad scientific consensus around AHT, but innocence groups and forensic reform advocates have successfully convinced several state courts otherwise.

At least, according to the National Register of Exemptions 34 parents and caregivers in 18 states convicted on the basis of AHT evidence have been acquitted.