Father Gets Executed For Killing His 2-year-old Daughter

By Amber Stevens

    A Texas Judge convicted 57-year-old Robert Roberson for killing his two-year-old daughter. He’s scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday. New York News states, “Judge Alfonso Charles, the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region presiding judge, denied the defense’s motion to vacate their client’s execution warrant on Tuesday, according to the Innocence Project.” If the execution goes through it’ll be the first carried out in the United States for a murder tied to shaken baby syndrome. 

    Roberts' attorney Gretchen Sween said, “It is terrifying that Robert, an innocent, disabled man with the most gracious heart, is scheduled to be executed under an invalid warrant issued by a seemingly biased judge in just two days.” In 2002, Robert found his daughter Nikki Curtis lying on the floor at the foot of her bed, comforted her, and put her back in her bed to find her in the morning with blue lips. He rushed her to the emergency room, where she was pronounced dead. There's new evidence from prosecutors that says that Curtis was injected with drugs by her father. 

    A detective who's leading the case and investigating Curtis's death said that Robert should be arrested because one of the doctors had a hypothesis about shaken baby syndrome. There will be a hearing at the Capitol on Wednesday to highlight Robert's case and other items related to the convictions by the shaken baby syndrome. New York News also says, “His defense and advocates also believe Roberson should be granted a stay of execution at the least after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction of Andrew Wayne Roark on Oct. 9. The court ruled Roark’s conviction was based on scientific understanding that has since evolved.” Robert ended up being sentenced to 35 years in prison after doctors reported injuries to Curtis in his care and the prosecutors said that it was shaken baby syndrome.