The following article contains graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault.
(Texas Scorecard) – Attorney General Ken Paxton is setting the record straight on the facts surrounding convicted child-murderer Robert Roberson, amid a push by anti-death penalty advocates to spare him the death penalty—and jail time altogether.
Roberson was convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in 2002. While he was scheduled for execution on Thursday of last week, members of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and the George Soros-backed Innocence Project group have worked to turn his case into a cause célèbre.
Ultimately, this resulted in the committee subpoenaing Roberson to testify after his scheduled execution date, a move that has had the effect of staying the execution for now and raising major separation of powers issues. Gov. Greg Abbott, for example, has stated that the committee “stepped out of line” in doing so, as only he has the constitutional authority to issue last minute stays of execution.
While the committee met earlier this week, Roberson did not appear to testify after all, as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Attorney General’s Office have refused to entertain allowing a violent death row offender into the state capitol to a public hearing due to the security risk. Roberson and his lawyers have refused to participate in remote videoconference testimony, arguing his autism precludes him from using the technology.
Without Roberson present, the committee instead heard invited testimony from witnesses such as TV talk show host Dr. Phil and novelist John Grisham. Every witness invited to testify sided with Roberson, painting a picture of a man who committed no crime and claiming that his daughter’s death was due to other circumstances or medical issues.
Now Paxton is rebutting what he is characterizing as lies coming from Democrat State Rep. Joe Moody, who chairs the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, and Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach.
In a report released today, Paxton went into gruesome detail about the fatal injuries sustained by Nikki at the hands of her father:
In 2002, 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. Emergency Room Nurse Andrea Sims, who 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.” Robert Roberson, her father, had a history of violently abusing his daughter, and witnesses testified in trial that they were afraid to leave Nikki alone with him because he would repeatedly “whip” her whenever the baby cried. Testimony showed that he often would strike Nikki “hard” with his hands, a board, or a paddle, and on at least one instance threw her off the bed. Robert Roberson’s own mother said at one time, “One of these days he’s going to kill her and it’s going to be too late for anyone to do anything about it.”
While Roberson’s proponents have attempted to claim that he was convicted based on “junk science” related to shaken baby syndrome, Paxton says that’s not the case:
According to doctors testifying at the trial, Nikki died from substantial blunt force head injuries that clearly indicated the girl had been struck. The evidence of blunt force trauma precluded the possibility that the child died from being “shaken.” Nikki was abused by her father and died due to the trauma he inflicted. After hearing this evidence and countless hours of testimony about Roberson’s pattern of losing his temper and violently abusing his daughter, a jury of his peers convicted him of murder in 2003, sentencing Roberson to the death penalty for beating his own daughter so viciously that she died. The law in Texas is clear: the prosecution must prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt as to every element of the offense as it is charged in the indictment. Roberson was charged with capital murder for intentionally and knowingly causing the death of a child by causing blunt force head injuries.
Paxton went on to note that this finding was backed by Dr. Jill Urban, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Nikki.
In 2016, when Roberson’s case was being appealed, Urban stated that she “quite clearly defined multiple impact sites to the head and ruled that the death was due to blunt force injuries.”
Roberson, meanwhile, has changed his own story numerous times. When he brought the nearly-lifeless Nikki to the hospital, he claimed she had simply fallen off the bed. He then told nurses she hit a table. Then, he went back to his original story, telling police that she fell out of bed. Later, he claimed he did not know how she suffered her injuries.
Furthermore, a police report states that Roberson admitted to another cellmate that Roberson sexually abused his daughter:
Roberson told him of “putting his [penis] in the baby’s mouth and rubbing his penis against her vagina.” The cellmate also said Roberson told him that when Roberson was upset with his female partner, he would take his anger out on Nikki. He told the cellmate of hitting Nikki on the back of her head with his hand and then dropping her on her head and leaving her on the floor.
Roberson had a history of violently abusing his daughter. Teddie Cox, his girlfriend at the time of the murder, said when she asked Roberson if he killed Nikki, he said, “that if he did do it, he don’t remember, that he snapped, and he don’t remember doing it.”
Nikki wasn’t the only target of Roberson’s abuse:
The jury also heard that Roberson, who had over a dozen prior arrests, had strangled his ex-wife with a coat hanger, punched her in the face and broke her nose while she was pregnant, and beat her with a fireplace shovel. The jury also heard that Roberson was the girl’s sole caretaker for the very first time on the day that Nikki’s deadly injuries were inflicted, and he was displeased to be obligated to care for the child, according to his girlfriend at the time.
Despite what Paxton is calling “eleventh-hour, one-sided, extrajudicial stunts that attempt to obscure the facts and rewrite his past,” his office is emphasizing the following points:
- Robert Roberson murdered two-year-old Nikki by beating her so brutally that she ultimately died.
- The jury did not convict Roberson on the basis of “Shaken Baby Syndrome.” The “junk science” objection that has been used as a pretext to interfere with the proceedings has no basis in reality.
- Roberson was lawfully sentenced to death. He has exhausted every legally available appellate avenue.
- A handful of legislators ha[ve] grossly interfered with the justice system by disregarding the separation of powers outlined in the State Constitution. They have created a Constitutional crisis on behalf of a man who beat his two-year-old daughter to death.