Hey, there are folks. It is Thursday, October ninth, and he was one week away from his execution date when a Texas inmate heard the words I guess every death row inmate wants to hear. They have stayed your execution. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Robert Robertson Rose, We've been in following this case for quite a while. Cannot believe here we are. He supposed to be executed a week from today. He got news that's not going forward.
Yes, October has been a scary but a good month for Robert Robertson because this is the second time in one year, in a period of twelve months, where there have been interventions to stop an imminent execution. He would have been and if this is eventually to go through, he would be the first person ever executed after being convicted of shaking baby syndrome. That's how flimsy and now really they say on warranted and baseless that science is that was used to convict him all those years ago.
If you've been following this case, we certainly have. You've been keeping up with us on our morning run. But Robert Robertson, I was fifty eight years old. He was convicted of killing his own daughter, a two year old Nikki, A story in the circumstances we'll get into, but he was convicted based on shaken baby syndrome. Well, a lot of that science has changed, and if he were to go to trial today, they wouldn't be allowed to even use the same science that they used all those years
ago to convict him. So he went before a court of appeals, and that quart of appeals has today come back and said we're going to halt your execution robes. They haven't said we are ending in or taking you off death row. They essentially said, nope, we're gonna stop it until another court at least here's.
You out correct.
And you know what, at this point, I think that's all his attorneys were trying to get. They were trying
to get another court hearing. They ultimately want a new trial because without that evidence, it seems very unlikely that he would be convicted of killing his two year old daughter, then two year old daughter, And certainly there have been so many people from John Grisham to Republican lawmakers in the state of Texas along with their Democratic counterparts, all rallying because they believe this man, Robert Robertson, is innocent, and he has maintained his innocence from the very beginning.
There have been several complicating factors that led to his conviction. All of them have been brought up, but it seems like the most compelling one with the Court of Appeals was this notion of a junk science being used to convict them. Because there is a law on the books in the state of Texas, its passed in twenty thirteen that allows a person to challenge their conviction if the science used to convict them has been discredited. That is clearly applicable to this case.
That's the case. I mean, I don't that's not in dispute by anybody at this point, right.
And Edi hadn't been able to get a new trial. He hadn't been able to get this because the only way, or the only reason why his scheduled execution was halted last year is because the bipartisan legislature decided to call him to testify. It was basically a maneuver to wait out the execution Dayton. They asked for him to testify what the week after his scheduled execution.
And so because they did that and he.
Never actually did testify, it pushed it to the next year.
So this guy, they kicked the can down the road there in Texas. So we got to the end of the road. Or at least it was supposed to be next week, October sixteenth, lethal injection. It was planned, he was supposed to die. Well, that's not going to happen at least next week. We want to be clear here,
they're not saying he is coming off death roll. What they're saying here, at least this Texas Court of Appeals is that, hey, the lower court, the trial court, you need to at least hear him out on his claims now. Robe one of them has to do with the junk science. The other one had to do with somebody else who was also convicted under baby shaken baby syndrome. And that person is out of prison now.
Yes, So the judge referenced this case of Andrew Rourke, who was convicted back in two thousand of injury to a child and based on shaking baby syndrome testimony. He was sentenced to thirty five years in prison. He also maintained his innocence from the beginning saying he never hit
or harmed his child. Last year, the court said, after hearing all the new evidence and certainly looking at the invalidity of the evidence presented in court at the time, they said he likely would not have been convicted today. So the appeals court sent his case back and the DA decided to exonerate Andrew Rourke. And that is what the judge cited when making the decision today about Robert Roberts.
Yah, they were throwing this name around. I wasn't I mean, familiar with Andrew Rourke in that case necessarily, but they were throwing it essentially saying, wait a minute, we want that deal. That's all we're asking for. Do what you did with him, which is take a look at this junk science. The conclusion seems clear there nowes we have to say, there are plenty of folks out there, and including the family of the little girl, at least the moms.
Some of them, yes, are they know?
And there are some lawmakers, There are some still police, There are some doctors would say, yeah, shaken baby syndrome is a real thing, and this child in particular ropes. I think it was the fact that little Nikki, to your old Nikki had some blunt force trauma. Now, the explanation was she had fallen out of the bed, but they thought she had been beaten.
Yes, they said that they felt like because of the trauma to the head, that she had been beaten or shaken. But his story, Robertson's story has stayed true and the same all these years, saying that she was ill. He had been taking her to the hospital. She had severe
viral and bacterial pneumonia. She had been given drugs and prescribed drugs by doctors that are now no longer allowed to be prescribed to children because I believe it affects their breathing, so it could stop your heart literally could be a cause of death. And so you've got these medications, you've got this severe viral and bacterial pnemonia, and this was not a healthy child. She had been in and out of the hospital for most of her little life,
and then she fell out of the bed. And that's how he explains, or at least that's what he says happened, and that would possibly be responsible for the blunt force trauma that they see.
Like you said, he's maintained his story throughout, so it's not just yes, they want the execution to stop, at least he and his attorneys. But they are they absolutely are proclaiming his innocence. This is a case that has been going on. They want him out of prison, not just off death row, and have maintained this for a long time that this guy and the other factor here right Robes, we discovered later.
That he is autistic, yes, and so that was part of also the testimony used against him in his initial trial, that he wasn't as emotional as you would expect a
father to be whose daughter was just pronounced dead. And so that same detective who testified against him has now come out very publicly and often saying he believes he's innocent, that he was wrong, that he misinterpreted ert Robertson's lack of empathy or lack of emotion and didn't realize that there was actually a clinical diagnosis behind why he acted and reacted the way he did.
That's incredible that something like that could factor into a man possibly being put to death, Like, I'm just not know who. I didn't know he was autistic. He just his emotional reactions were enough to make somebody think he was guilty. This case is incredibly fascinating, and we keep learning more and more and more about it. Ropes. I'm
still as we go through. We've been talking about the death penalty more and more here lately, and I can't isn't this the proof that this man shouldn't be executed, that everybody's fighting about it this much. Clearly we're not one hundred percent sure, And I say we talking about just as a society. Shouldn't that be enough to say we're not in agreement. It has to be one hundred percent sure.
All of us. There's no taking it back.
There's no exonerating someone if you do it posthumously, that the damage is done, there's no taking it back.
This is permanent.
This isn't like whoopsie, we put you in prison, which is still significant. I mean, his attorneys point out that he has spent the last twenty two years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, and they had said that over and over again, and by the way, they also pointed to this statistic just for some perspective. Since nineteen ninety two, at least forty parents and caregivers have now been exonerated after they were convicted for wrongful shake
in baby syndrome. So this is not unusual. Since nineteen ninety two, for over the past thirty years, forty parents and caregivers have since been exonerated after they were already convicted.
His conviction was what year. I can't believe we don't know this off the top of our heads, as much as.
We've been I thought it was two thousand and two.
That sounds right. Two thousand and two is when Nikki died. Yes, So I mean this is right around that. I mean, it's it's in I just if we get away from a moral question of the death penalty. And this is not a matter of I believe we should have it or I believe we shouldn't have it. We all agree that we shouldn't put somebody to death that we are not one hundred percent sure of the guilt, the guilt at least,
and it's just too much with this one Rogan. Some I guess on one side, I might say, well, I am one hundred percent sure, and the other side said, well I am one hundred percent sure.
Two. But the question would be given the information we know now that we didn't know what the time of his trial, what a jury of his peers find him guilty or innocent. And I think that's a fair question to ask now twenty two years later, when we know more. It's I mean, I know this is a really bad comparison, but I think about college football, and you know, a
ref makes a call right there in the field. Why wouldn't we want to go back now if we have better information to actually see if the ball was out of bounds. If we can do that and then have a better clear understanding, and then the ref can make a better choice based on better information, why wouldn't we want that for somebody whose life is on the line.
Continuing with your football analogy, what if that play is the game winning one, then the game's over after a call we didn't review. This is what we're talking about, just in life and death. Now we have to have to be sure. Look, I'm glad no matter what, there are people who absolutely believe this man is a monster and he did something as heinous as it gets. We're talking about a two year old child who had health problems, and they believe this man beat his child to death.
And you have another side to this story, and then you have science, and science was telling us Robes something different today than it was telling us thirty years ago. And I think the law says we're supposed to listen, right.
I believe that is what justice is.
It's not about defending the fact that you thought you were right thirty years ago, but actually examining whether or not you truly were.
That's justice.
And we're talking about where this case is now and all these developments that took place today. The court has stepped in and said, yes, we're going to stay the execution, but we haven't even told you, at least in this podcast about the other update. There was another huge development in this case this week, a development we thought was the one that might actually get him a stay of execution.
We continue our conversation now about this major development in the case of fifty eight year old Robert Robertson. He was convicted of murdering his two year old daughter, Nicki, and the basis for that conviction was science that is now considered junk science.
It's shaken baby syndrome.
And after years and years, more than a decade of trying, his lawyers have finally gotten a stay of execution and a request for there to be a court hearing on this new evidence for there to be a reconsideration of new medical information that has come to light concerning how
and why this man was convicted. And in this appeal, this is really interesting, Robertson's lawyers included along with that new scientific information that we now know, they actually say ten independent pathologists looked at that original medical examiner's autopsy of little Nikki and they concluded that Nicki died. The coroner's report that Nicki died from those blunt force head injuries, which is really what got him convicted, were not reliable.
So ten independent pathologists. So the defense really put on an incredible, I don't want to say show, but just really produced a significant amount of evidence enough to sway this judge for the first time in a long time.
And look, the other side will give you their witnesses and they're experts, and you're supposed to work all that out in court and let a jury decide. But again the point here being, the jury didn't get to hear some of the stuff we know not we know, yes, we just we know more.
And there's something else the jury didn't get to hear, and it's something that actually was made or I guess there was some light shed on it in a podcast just a few days ago of Dayline podcast where we heard from for the first time Nicky's maternal grandfather, who told NBC's Lester Holds something we had not yet hurt.
Yeah, we thought this was the thing, right there was He's got so much Robert Robertson, so many motions out there trying to get the execution stopped, and we thought, Okay, he's running out of options. Next week is going to
be it. And then this dateline thing comes up where the grandfather on the little baby Nicky's on the mom's side, said that he got a call when Nicky was in the hospital that a judge called that hospital and told them that the grandparents were actually the parents and that the grandparents had the right to make the call to take the child off life support, and they did do so. That same judge ends up signing the arrestaurant for Robert Robertson.
That same judge ends up being the judge in his trial. Now, as you're hearing those facts laid out, you might go, wait a minute, that doesn't sound right, well, because it's not. First of all, only Bert Roberson had the right to make that call.
About that child, yes, and then so beyond that, it just screams of judicial misconduct. You know, this is somebody who clearly was overly involved from the actual decision regarding her death to who to arrest and then presiding over and you know, a judge again to make another sports reference.
But much like a.
Referee can absolutely sway, a jury can absolutely have an impact or an influence over how certain evidence is allowed, how it's received, how it's perceived that Durer instructions. There is so much influence that these judges have over these trials, So how could that possibly not be misconduct?
I was shocked to hear. I mean, you just go to the I mean again, she was on life support, so we have to assume they didn't think she was going to do well, or maybe she wasn't going to make it. But still someone made the call about the life and death of his child and he didn't get to that right there strips wrights away from him, and he has a case and a cause there it's just
too much. We're overwhelmed now with information of what the hell and we can't trust that, but that expert trust that it's too much just I know they've got to go through the legal process. But this seems don't you think Rope's going in the direction even if it's not an exoneration, they got to get him off.
It feels like that's where it's headed.
And we actually, I mean, I again am no legal expert, but just having covered it the way we have, I am certainly hopeful that that is the outcome.
And to know that.
Ultra conservative Republican lawmakers from Texas who are very pro death penalty all joined forces with Democrats in that state after reviewing all of the evidence and the things that we are now explaining to you here, that they all were on board with getting him and actually creating a political stunt to make sure he wasn't executed. With the little power that they had over the situation, I think speaks of volumes.
Okay, I'm smiling. You said they pulled off a political stunt. It was a bipartisan which is so rare. The last one there was one side. We're talking about Texas Republicans and Democrats working together. That should be enough great execution that Texas Republicans are working with their Democratic counter of arts to save a man's life who's on death row. Idea.
That is all.
Well, that's most of the proof that I need at this point. But again, certainly some news of relief for Robertson and his supporters, and I know some frustration for folks who think that this is exactly what should have happened, and they're frustrated by our very lengthy process to actually go through an execution, but certainly one that has to be the case because of something very much like this.
We have to be sure and if we can't be sure, yeah, I think that is just what most people who look at this case, even if they are pro death penalty, this is a this is a very specific situation. So we will continue to follow any new developments bring you the very latest. Thank you as always for listening to us.
I made me wrote back alongside T. J.
Holmes.
We'll talk to you soon.
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