A day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released the autopsy report for Nikki Curtis, the daughter Robert Roberson was convicted of killing and sentenced to death for, Roberson’s defense team has released a 27-page rebuttal to Paxton’s statements.
The rebuttal focuses on what the defense team calls 12 misrepresentations by Paxton in Roberson’s case.
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“On October 23, 2024, the Office of the Attorney General issued a press release, bearing the seal of the State of Texas, doubling down on its grotesque misrepresentations of Robert Roberson’s innocence case endeavoring to discredit Mr. Roberson and those, including a bipartisan group of elected representatives, who properly view his case as a tremendous miscarriage of justice,” the rebuttal starts out saying.
The 12 points the defense team calls misrepresentations are as follows. The language below comes directly from the defense team’s rebuttal:
Misrepresentation #1: The OAG has released to the public the 2002 autopsy report of Mr. Roberson’s two-year-old child (Nikki Curtis), implying that it is definitive, ignoring all 2002 trial and a 2021 evidentiary hearing testimony identifying material flaws in the report.
Misrepresentation #2: The OAG falsely claims: “two-year-old Nikki Curtis was brought to the hospital close to death with extensive bruising to her chin, face, ears, eyes, shoulder, and mouth.” NO ONE testified that there were bruises all over Nikki’s body.
Misrepresentation #3: The OAG invokes the authority of “Emergency Room Nurse Andrea Sims” claiming she “saw Nikki before medical intervention, testified at trial that, in addition to the bruising, Nikki had a handprint on her face, and that the back of her skull was bruised and ‘mushy.’” (See document for more details)
Misrepresentation #4: The OAG falsely claims that “Nikki was abused by her father and died due to the trauma he inflicted” invoking imaginary “countless hours of testimony” that is entirely missing from the trial transcripts. Read the transcripts. The evidence, manufactured for trial from a handful of impaired and traumatized witnesses related to Robert’s estranged girlfriend Teddie Cox is all the State could adduce. There 8 p. 9 is no record of violent acts in Robert’s extensive social history records.
Misrepresentation #5: The OAG wrongly claims that “doctors” at trial testified that “Nikki died from substantial blunt force head injuries that clearly indicated the girl had been struck” and “precluded the possibility that the child died from being ‘shaken.’”
Misrepresentation #6: The OAG falsely claims “Dr. Jill Urban, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the two-year-old’s corpse, testified during the trial using photographic evidence that Nikki’s head had been repeatedly struck leaving clear impact wounds totally incompatible with merely being violently shaken.”
Misrepresentation #7: The OAG falsely claims “Roberson repeatedly changed his story during the investigation and trial about what happened to Nikki[.] " In truth, Mr. Roberson’s statements were remarkably consistent...
Misrepresentation #8: The OAG relies on a psychologist retained by defense counsel at trial for the punishment-phase to argue that Robert “confessed” to “shaking Nikki” (even as the State argues, incoherently, that this was not a “shaking baby” case after all).
Misrepresentation #9: The OAG asserts, absent evidence, that Robert “had over a dozen prior arrests[.]” The State should look back at the trial record as well as its own direct appeal brief, which identifies arrests for burglary (1), writing hot checks (2), and a probation violation (1)—all of which Robert pleaded guilty to and served his time without incident. Most importantly, Robert had absolutely no accusations, arrests, or criminal charges for any violence before he was falsely accused of hurting Nikki. And Robert has been a model inmate for the past 22 years since his arrest.
Misrepresentation #10: The OAG involves the punishment-phase testimony of Robert’s ex-wife, Della Gray, who spun a string of alarming tales about a coat hanger and fireplace shovel and a broken nose—none of which is supported by any contemporaneous medical, police, or court records.
Misrepresentation #11: The OAG’s most egregious lie is the statement suggesting that an unidentified “cellmate” claimed that he had sexually assaulted Nikki, providing a pornographic and COMPLETELY BASELESS report that amounts to no more than profoundly disturbing prosecutorial misconduct. This calumny was not put before the jury. There is only one possible reason that the prosecution would fail to introduce at trial the informant’s highly inflammatory claims—they did not believe their own snitch and realized that his allegations were false and motivated by his express requests for help from prosecutors in getting a reduction of his sentence—which can be found in the DA’s file.
Misrepresentation #12: The OAG incorrectly asserts: “Now, a coalition of activists and State legislators is interfering with the justice system in an unprecedented way in an attempt to stall or prevent Roberson’s execution. They have attempted to mislead the public by falsely claiming that Roberson was unfairly convicted through “junk science” concerning ‘shaken baby syndrome.’” The OAG has obviously ignored the concrete evidence contained in the massive pleadings Mr. Roberson has filed and developed since 2016—not suddenly “now”. Mr. Roberson has more than established his right to relief under Texas’s acclaimed “changed science” law.
On each of the points, the defense team cites sources, the trial, and post-conviction records.
“The information below demonstrates that the State of Texas persistently refuses to acknowledge the truth in this case. In multiple expert reports, testimony during the post-conviction hearing in 2021, and recent testimony before the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, highly specialized medical experts have explained exactly how Nikki died as a result of pneumonia, exacerbated by improper medications, and how the progression of her disease affected her body, along with medical intervention, to create the condition that she was in two days later when the autopsy was performed. They also explained the absence of evidence of “battery” or any other abuse and that the State’s crime theory is untethered to science—and not to even to the trial record. The lead detective, Brian Wharton, explained how Mr. Roberson’s case involved a rush to judgment based on flawed medical information and misperceptions based on Mr. Roberson’s autism,” the document reads.
The full document can be read below:
Later Thursday, the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence released its own 16-page response to the Attorney General. You can read that response below:
Roberson was scheduled to be executed on Thursday, Oct. 17, but a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify before them in a hearing about his case, sparking a legal debate and ultimately delaying Roberson’s execution.
The legal debate has centered around the Separation-of-Powers Clause in the Texas Constitution and whether the lawmakers have the authority to issue a subpoena to a death row inmate in the point in the case where it was, the eleventh hour.
Prior to Wednesday’s statement by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott submitted a letter to the Texas Supreme Court, who ultimately stayed Roberson’s execution following the lawmakers appeal, saying that the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence “stepped out of line” by subpoenaing Roberson.
Abbott argued the state constitution, at that point in the case, granted only the governor the authority to grant clemency or a 30-day reprieve in the capital case.
Abbott argued unless the tactic is rejected by the Texas Supreme Court, it can be repeated in any capital case, effectively rewriting the Texas Constitution to reassign a power given only to the governor.
“In all that time, even when it was clear that Roberson’s execution date was nearing and the Article 11.073 issue was manifest, the House Committee could not trouble itself with seeking Roberson’s testimony. Only at the eleventh hour, when the Constitution empowers the Governor to make the last move, did the House Committee decide to violate the Separation-of-Powers Clause,” Abbott said.