Texas wants new execution date for Robert Roberson, death row inmate in shaken baby case

State asks for Robert Roberson to be executed on Oct. 16, 2025; Roberson's lawyers file motion to object

Lawyers representing a Texas death row inmate who avoided capital punishment last year are objecting to the state's request for a new execution date.

On Monday, the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested that the Anderson County District Court schedule 58-year-old Robert Roberson's execution for Oct. 16.

In its five-page motion, Paxton's office said that because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s top criminal court, has previously denied appeals in Roberson’s case, “the criteria for setting an execution have been met.”

Roberson received a stay of execution in October 2024 following the unprecedented efforts of a group of bipartisan state legislators who believed he was innocent and had been convicted on flawed science. Had his execution been carried out, he would have become the first person in the U.S. to be executed for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome (SBS).

A House committee held hearings on Roberson's case, but he never testified because Paxton’s office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers.

Roberson's attorneys have repeatedly said he was wrongfully convicted of causing the 2002 death of his chronically ill daughter, Nikki. They currently have an application for habeas corpus relief pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and filed a motion Tuesday to be heard and objecting to the request for an execution date. That motion can be read here.

“Robert Roberson is innocent. Yet Attorney General Paxton, whose office just recently took over the state’s representation, is trying to execute him even though Robert has presented powerful new evidence of his innocence to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals," said Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson's attorneys. "The AG’s unjustified rush to seek an execution date while that new evidence of innocence is before the court is outrageous."

Prosecutors argued Roberson violently shook his daughter back and forth, causing severe head trauma in what’s called shaken baby syndrome. His lawyers and some medical experts argued his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.

Roberson's attorneys said Tuesday they have obtained "overwhelming evidence, including more unrebutted evidence since last fall proving that Robert’s daughter died because of illness, medical error, and accident, none of which was Robert’s fault."

Sween said Tuesday new information continues to come to light proving her client's innocence and that they were "grateful that his habeas application with that new evidence is currently being considered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals."

“There is no justification for the attorney general’s relentless effort to kill an innocent human being — and no state law or moral law that authorizes seeking an execution date under these circumstances,” Sween said.

It was not immediately known when a court hearing would be held. The case currently lacks a presiding judge following the previous judge's recusal from the case in November.

Source: The Associated Press, NBCDFW, Juan A. Lozano, Staff, June 18, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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