QUOTES OF THE DAY: "Brian Wharton, the detective who investigated the death of Roberson’s daughter, fought back tears at the hearing as he described how he felt about Roberson’s impending execution. “I told my wife that I’m ashamed,” he said. “I’m ashamed that I was so focused on finding an offender … that I did not see Robert. I did not hear his voice.”
Former juror Terre Compton told lawmakers that if she had known then what she knows now, that the jury did not hear most of the evidence about Nikki’s poor health, “I would not have found him guilty.” Compton said Roberson’s plight weighed on her heavily. “In my eyes, I was killing a man that I knew was innocent. And I was going to have to live with that,” she said.
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STORY: "The Ongoing Effort to Save Robert Roberson," by Senior Digital Editor Bethany Erickson, published by D Magazine, on August June 20, 2025. (Bethany Erickson is the senior digital editor for D Magazine. She's written about real estate, education policy, the stock market, and crime throughout her career, and sometimes all at the same time. You'll find her writing primarily about city hall, Dallas ISD, and the Texas legislature, and editing the popular DBrief newsletter. She's won awards from National Association of Real Estate Editors, the Local Media Association, and the National Newspaper Association. She hates lima beans and 5 a.m. and takes SAT practice tests for fun.)
SUB-HEADING: "Armed with a stack of new evidence, Robert Roberson’s lawyers are pleading his innocence once again—weeks before his execution in Texas.
GIST: "Unless his judicial luck changes, the excruciating truth is that in one month and three weeks, Robert Roberson will be executed.
Experts have gone on the record in court hearings, to the press, and even in legislative hearings, all for naught.
Roberson, who was convicted of capital murder after being accused of shaking his toddler daughter, Nikki Curtis, to death in 2002, is facing another execution date, despite the persistent questions about his guilt.
To stress how extraordinary his case is, if Roberson loses his appeals, he will become the first person in the U.S. executed because of an allegation of “shaken baby syndrome.”
Will Texas Kill This Innocent Man?
Even the detective who helped prosecute Robert Roberson now says he didn’t kill his child.
Roberson was originally set to be executed in October 2024, but that date came and went after a Texas House committee subpoenaed Roberson to testify at a meeting occurring a day after his execution date. During that legislative hearing, the public heard from the detective and juror who had originally believed Roberson was guilty, but testified that subsequent evidence forced them to see his conviction as an injustice. Much of the testimony that day also centered around Roberson’s autism diagnosis and how that impacted his reaction to his daughter’s medical distress when doctors and detectives spoke to him.
Brian Wharton, the detective who investigated the death of Roberson’s daughter, fought back tears at the hearing as he described how he felt about Roberson’s impending execution. “I told my wife that I’m ashamed,” he said. “I’m ashamed that I was so focused on finding an offender … that I did not see Robert. I did not hear his voice.”
Former juror Terre Compton told lawmakers that if she had known then what she knows now, that the jury did not hear most of the evidence about Nikki’s poor health, “I would not have found him guilty.” Compton said Roberson’s plight weighed on her heavily. “In my eyes, I was killing a man that I knew was innocent. And I was going to have to live with that,” she said.
Roberson was convicted in Anderson County, but much of the evidence presented in the case came from Dallas County.
Nikki died at Children’s Health in Dallas.
Her autopsy was performed by Dr. Jill Urban, a forensic pathologist with the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Roberson’s attorneys have vigorously questioned Urban’s findings and have brought a slate of independent pathologists to testify that Nikki was a very sick child who was prone to respiratory ailments that included occasionally not breathing.
She had also been prescribed promethazine, which now carries a black-box warning regarding its use with small children.
Roberson’s attorneys say the autopsy and initial findings from the Children’s child abuse expert did not take that into account.
In March, Dallas County hired an independent forensic pathologist to review the case.
Earlier this year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded that Anderson County, where Roberson was originally tried, set an execution date. In July, that date was set for October 16.
For many who have reviewed his voluminous case files, it’s a clear case of a conviction based on “junk science”—an old, debunked understanding of what doctors may see in a child who has been shaken severely.
Roberson’s lawyers have filed several appeals
Today, his attorneys filed for a second time to convince the court to allow them to present newer evidence
It includes a letter signed by 10 pathologists from all over the globe, questioning the findings of the Dallas County Coroner’s Office.
It also included a letter from state Rep. Lacey Hull (R-Houston), who explained why legislation she championed and also wrote applied to Roberson’s case specifically, and why the court should use those new laws to reconsider his conviction.
Hull has been part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing for the court to reexamine his case.
She pointed first to a 2021 bill, Senate Bill 1578, that allowed parents or guardians accused of child abuse by child abuse pediatricians (or CAPs) to ask for a second opinion and then present that opinion to a judge.
“This law was a direct response to a disturbing social problem that I have studied: medically fragile children wrongfully separated from blameless parents by the allegations of CAPs with potential conflicts of interest and a lack of impartiality,” she wrote. The bill passed both chambers unanimously, she said.
In the most recent session, she filed two bills that were directly influenced by Roberson’s case.
House Bill 2071 addressed conflicts of interest when alleged medical abuse by CAP doctors is investigated, and also ensures that parents and guardians can get all of their child’s medical records, including the names of physicians involved in diagnosing the child. That bill will become law next month.
A second bill, HB 2072, did not pass, but would have made it a first-degree felony to withdraw life-sustaining treatment contrary to a patient’s advance directive or someone allowed by law (like a parent) to make those decisions.
Hull alleges that Children’s Dallas’s decision to remove Nikki from life support was done without Roberson’s permission.
She says that in a meeting with Children’s at her office in Austin earlier this year, as she was working on her legislation, “it was represented to me as fact” that the hospital had reached out to the courts in Anderson County to determine who could make that decision.
The county, she said, told Children’s that “Nikki’s maternal grandparents were the legal guardians with authority to make end-of-life decisions on her behalf.”
Hull told hospital officials she did not believe that was accurate. “The basis for my skepticism was that it had been widely reported that Mr. Roberson had been awarded custody a few months before his daughter’s death,” she wrote. If that were true, it would have been his call, not the grandparents.
Hull said she provided additional information about Nikki’s custody that she had obtained, and wrote that she believed that it was at that meeting that Children’s first became aware that “hospital staff had been misinformed by Anerson (sic) County about who had authority to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from Mr. Roberson’s daughter Nikki when that action was taken.”
Hull concluded her letter by saying she was “deeply troubled” by the rush to execution when there is still evidence that hasn’t been presented in court.
After the judge ruled on Roberson’s execution date last month, his attorney, Gretchen Sween, said they will seek a stay. “Texans should be outraged that the court has scheduled an execution date for a demonstrably innocent man,” she said in a statement.
“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.""
The entire story can be read at:
the-ongoing-effort-to-save-robert-roberson
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
