Roberson v. Texas
The Supreme Court declined to halt the execution of Robert Roberson, a Texas man convicted of killing his infant daughter based on shaken baby syndrome testimony that has since been called into serious scientific doubt.
Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to say the evidence strongly suggests Roberson may be innocent, but that the Court was legally powerless to act — and urged the Texas governor to issue a 30-day reprieve as the only remaining avenue for relief.
How it got here: Texas courts denied multiple post-conviction challenges; Roberson filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to halt his execution, which was referred by Justice Alito to the full Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Robert Roberson was convicted in Texas in 2003 and sentenced to death for the murder of his two-year-old daughter Nikki. The prosecution's case rested heavily on expert testimony that Nikki died from shaken baby syndrome. In the years since, the medical community has seriously questioned that diagnosis. Roberson presented evidence that Nikki actually died from pneumonia and dangerous prescription medications her doctors gave her, and that he never harmed her.
The question before the Court
Could the Supreme Court stop the execution of a Texas man whose capital murder conviction rested on shaken baby syndrome science that courts have since acknowledged is seriously disputed?
The Court's answer
No — the Court had no legal power to stop the execution because Roberson raised no viable federal constitutional claim. To halt an execution, a defendant must show a real chance of winning a federal legal challenge. Roberson's state-court petitions relied entirely on a Texas state law allowing challenges based on discredited science, not on any federal constitutional right.
His only federal argument before the Supreme Court — that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issues boilerplate dismissals without engaging the evidence — was foreclosed by the Court's prior ruling holding that federal courts cannot tell state courts how to write their opinions. Without a federal claim, the Court was legally obligated to deny the stay, regardless of how compelling the innocence evidence appeared.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
When a conviction rests on science that is later discredited but the defendant cannot point to a specific federal constitutional violation, federal courts — including the Supreme Court — have no legal authority to intervene, even in a capital case. Roberson's situation illustrates that gap: strong innocence claims alone are not enough to unlock federal court review.
What changes now
The Supreme Court's denial removed the last legal obstacle to Roberson's execution. Justice Sotomayor called on the Texas governor to grant a 30-day executive reprieve so the Board of Pardons and Paroles could reconsider Roberson's innocence claims. This order is an emergency action and does not resolve any broader legal question about shaken baby syndrome convictions, post-conviction science challenges, or the scope of federal courts' power in similar cases.
What this does not decide
The Court did not rule on whether Roberson is innocent, whether his trial was fair, or whether the Texas courts correctly applied state law to his case. It also did not address whether defendants in similar situations — convicted using later-discredited science but with no federal claim — have any path to federal relief.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor agreed that the Court was legally unable to act because Roberson presented no cognizable federal claim, but wrote at length to explain why the case was deeply troubling. She detailed the mounting evidence that Nikki died from pneumonia and dangerous medications rather than abuse, and argued that the Texas courts had not adequately engaged with that evidence. She called on the Texas governor to grant a 30-day executive reprieve — the only remaining check on executing a man who, she said, had raised credible evidence of actual innocence.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- To obtain an emergency halt to an execution, a defendant must show a 'significant possibility of success on the merits' of a federal legal claim — meaning an actual federal constitutional or statutory argument, not just a state-law challenge. Roberson's entire post-conviction fight was built on a Texas state statute (Article 11.073) that lets defendants challenge convictions based on discredited forensic science.
- Roberson never raised federal constitutional claims in the Texas courts, so there was no federal claim for the Supreme Court to evaluate. He argued in his application to the Court that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had a practice of issuing boilerplate dismissals of subsequent habeas petitions without addressing the evidence — but the Court's prior decision in Coleman v. Thompson (1991) squarely forecloses that: federal courts have no power to dictate how state courts write their opinions.
- Because Roberson could not satisfy the threshold requirement of presenting a colorable federal claim, the Court was legally unable to grant the stay — even though Justice Sotomayor noted that the same expert's testimony on the same shaken-baby-syndrome theory had just been found unreliable enough to grant a new trial to a different Texas defendant (Roark) in proceedings that concluded the same week.
- Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to highlight what she saw as a troubling gap: the Texas courts' stated reason for denying Roberson relief — that the case also involved blunt-force injury evidence beyond shaking — had not accounted for Roberson's evidence that those injuries likely resulted from hospital brain surgery rather than any act by him. She argued the record showed shaken baby syndrome was the prosecution's core theory throughout the trial.
- With the legal avenues exhausted and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles having declined to recommend clemency, Sotomayor identified only one remaining remedy: an executive reprieve from the governor, which is a constitutional power that exists precisely to prevent executing someone whose innocence has never been fully examined.