He was sentenced to death after his toddler died. Now, shaken baby syndrome is at the heart of Robert Roberson’s 11th-hour appeals

The inmate would be the first person in the US executed on a shaken baby syndrome-based conviction, his lawyers say, as the diagnosis is under increasing scrutiny in courts.

Texas this week plans to execute Robert Roberson, whose attorneys say was wrongfully convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter more than 20 years ago. His advocates contend Roberson’s sickly toddler, Nikki Curtis, died of double pneumonia that had progressed to sepsis, her illness further exacerbated by a combination of medicines now seen as unsuitable for children. But when Roberson took Nikki to a hospital, doctors and nurses immediately diagnosed her with suspected abuse based on bruises and injuries to Nikki’s head, including severe brain swelling and bleeding in her brain and at the back of her eyes, court documents show. The inmate’s attorneys call that a misdiagnosis – and also discredit shaken baby syndrome on its face, despite broad consensus among pediatricians it is legitimate. The lawyers say, too, Roberson’s behavior in the hospital was misjudged. His strange, “flat” demeanor, then viewed by medical staff and police as evidence of his guilt, was a manifestation of Roberson’s autism, which went undiagnosed until 2018. “It wasn’t a crime committed,” Roberson, 57, told CNN about a week before his scheduled lethal injection. “I was falsely, wrongly convicted of a crime – they said it was a crime, but it wasn’t no crime and stuff because I had a sick little girl, you know?”