An appeals court has issued a stay of execution for a man who was set to become the first in the nation to be put to death over shaken baby syndrome.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the ruling on Thursday, Oct. 9, one week before Robert Roberson's scheduled execution for the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki.
The appeals court found that Roberson deserves a new hearing to present evidence about shaken baby syndrome, which has been increasingly discredited in recent years.
Roberson has won unprecedented support from many corners of Texas and the nation with his innocence claims, including dozens of Republican lawmakers, the lead detective in his case and bestselling author John Grisham. The state attorney general's office has been pushing for the execution, arguing that Nikki had blunt-force injuries beyond shaken baby syndrome.
The court rejected that and wrote that the government's case was "inseparably intertwined with Shaken BabySyndrome as it was medically understood more than 20 years ago."
