Robert Roberson was sentenced in 2003 for killing toddler on basis of shaken baby syndrome, now ruled as ‘scientifically unreliable’

A Texas prisoner who is facing execution having been sent to death row on the basis of “shaken baby syndrome”, a child abuse theory that has been widely debunked as junk science, has had his petition to the US supreme court denied.

The country’s highest court issued its denial on Monday morning giving no explanation. Robert Roberson, 56, who was sent to death row in 2003 for shaking his two-year-old daughter Nikki to death, had appealed to the justices to take another look at his case focusing on the largely discredited forensic science on which his conviction was secured.

The court’s decision leaves Roberson’s life in jeopardy. Having come within four days of execution in 2016, he has already exhausted appeals through Texas state courts and must now rely on the mercy of the Republican governor Greg Abbott who rarely grants clemency.

“Robert Roberson is an innocent father who has languished on Texas’s death row for 20 years for a crime that never occurred and a conviction based on outdated and now refuted science,” the prisoner’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween, said.

  • J.P.English
    35•1 year ago

    I tried looking into why would they call the “shaken baby syndrome” “junk science”, since it’s a very real thing accepted by all the reliable sources I could google. I had to read into their linked sources to understand what part exactly is “junk”.

    So just to clarify, it’s not that the “shaken baby syndrome” isn’t real. It is. The “junk” is the part in which scientists identified three symptoms (“bleeding between the tissue layers covering the brain, swelling on the brain, and bleeding at the back of the eyes”) that happen from shaken baby syndrome, and some forensic practitioners read that as a bi-directionally exclusive relationship: if the three symptoms occur, it must be shaken baby syndrome. There isn’t enough evidence to support that other issues couldn’t cause the same symptoms, and using that triad as proof of abuse is controversial.

    But shaken baby syndrome is very real, and it causes those three symptoms. The wording of this article (including the subheading) repeatedly seems to imply otherwise, which spreads dangerous misinformation that reads as “shaken baby syndrome is a myth” and that “physically abusing children doesn’t cause shaken baby syndrome”. That is “junk journalism”.