Speaker 1: Hey, there are folks. It is Thursday, October ninth, and
Speaker 1: he was one week away from his execution date when
Speaker 1: a Texas inmate heard the words I guess every death
Speaker 1: row inmate wants to hear. They have stayed your execution.
Speaker 1: And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
Speaker 1: Robert Robertson Rose, We've been in following this case for
Speaker 1: quite a while. Cannot believe here we are. He supposed
Speaker 1: to be executed a week from today. He got news
Speaker 1: that's not going forward.
Speaker 2: Yes, October has been a scary but a good month
Speaker 2: for Robert Robertson because this is the second time in
Speaker 2: one year, in a period of twelve months, where there
Speaker 2: have been interventions to stop an imminent execution. He would
Speaker 2: have been and if this is eventually to go through,
Speaker 2: he would be the first person ever executed after being
Speaker 2: convicted of shaking baby syndrome. That's how flimsy and now
Speaker 2: really they say on warranted and baseless that science is
Speaker 2: that was used to convict him all those years ago.
Speaker 1: If you've been following this case, we certainly have. You've
Speaker 1: been keeping up with us on our morning run. But
Speaker 1: Robert Robertson, I was fifty eight years old. He was
Speaker 1: convicted of killing his own daughter, a two year old Nikki,
Speaker 1: A story in the circumstances we'll get into, but he
Speaker 1: was convicted based on shaken baby syndrome. Well, a lot
Speaker 1: of that science has changed, and if he were to
Speaker 1: go to trial today, they wouldn't be allowed to even
Speaker 1: use the same science that they used all those years
Speaker 1: ago to convict him. So he went before a court
Speaker 1: of appeals, and that quart of appeals has today come
Speaker 1: back and said we're going to halt your execution robes.
Speaker 1: They haven't said we are ending in or taking you
Speaker 1: off death row. They essentially said, nope, we're gonna stop
Speaker 1: it until another court at least here's.
Speaker 3: You out correct.
Speaker 2: And you know what, at this point, I think that's
Speaker 2: all his attorneys were trying to get. They were trying
Speaker 2: to get another court hearing. They ultimately want a new
Speaker 2: trial because without that evidence, it seems very unlikely that
Speaker 2: he would be convicted of killing his two year old daughter,
Speaker 2: then two year old daughter, And certainly there have been
Speaker 2: so many people from John Grisham to Republican lawmakers in
Speaker 2: the state of Texas along with their Democratic counterparts, all
Speaker 2: rallying because they believe this man, Robert Robertson, is innocent,
Speaker 2: and he has maintained his innocence from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: There have been several complicating factors that led to his conviction.
Speaker 2: All of them have been brought up, but it seems
Speaker 2: like the most compelling one with the Court of Appeals
Speaker 2: was this notion of a junk science being used to
Speaker 2: convict them. Because there is a law on the books
Speaker 2: in the state of Texas, its passed in twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: that allows a person to challenge their conviction if the
Speaker 2: science used to convict them has been discredited. That is
Speaker 2: clearly applicable to this case.
Speaker 1: That's the case. I mean, I don't that's not in
Speaker 1: dispute by anybody at this point, right.
Speaker 2: And Edi hadn't been able to get a new trial.
Speaker 2: He hadn't been able to get this because the only way,
Speaker 2: or the only reason why his scheduled execution was halted
Speaker 2: last year is because the bipartisan legislature decided to call
Speaker 2: him to testify. It was basically a maneuver to wait
Speaker 2: out the execution Dayton. They asked for him to testify
Speaker 2: what the week after his scheduled execution.
Speaker 3: And so because they did that and he.
Speaker 2: Never actually did testify, it pushed it to the next year.
Speaker 1: So this guy, they kicked the can down the road
Speaker 1: there in Texas. So we got to the end of
Speaker 1: the road. Or at least it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: next week, October sixteenth, lethal injection. It was planned, he
Speaker 1: was supposed to die. Well, that's not going to happen
Speaker 1: at least next week. We want to be clear here,
Speaker 1: they're not saying he is coming off death roll. What
Speaker 1: they're saying here, at least this Texas Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: is that, hey, the lower court, the trial court, you
Speaker 1: need to at least hear him out on his claims now.
Speaker 1: Robe one of them has to do with the junk science.
Speaker 1: The other one had to do with somebody else who
Speaker 1: was also convicted under baby shaken baby syndrome. And that
Speaker 1: person is out of prison now.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the judge referenced this case of Andrew Rourke,
Speaker 2: who was convicted back in two thousand of injury to
Speaker 2: a child and based on shaking baby syndrome testimony. He
Speaker 2: was sentenced to thirty five years in prison. He also
Speaker 2: maintained his innocence from the beginning saying he never hit
Speaker 2: or harmed his child. Last year, the court said, after
Speaker 2: hearing all the new evidence and certainly looking at the
Speaker 2: invalidity of the evidence presented in court at the time,
Speaker 2: they said he likely would not have been convicted today.
Speaker 2: So the appeals court sent his case back and the
Speaker 2: DA decided to exonerate Andrew Rourke. And that is what
Speaker 2: the judge cited when making the decision today about Robert Roberts.
Speaker 1: Yah, they were throwing this name around. I wasn't I mean,
Speaker 1: familiar with Andrew Rourke in that case necessarily, but they
Speaker 1: were throwing it essentially saying, wait a minute, we want
Speaker 1: that deal. That's all we're asking for. Do what you
Speaker 1: did with him, which is take a look at this
Speaker 1: junk science. The conclusion seems clear there nowes we have
Speaker 1: to say, there are plenty of folks out there, and
Speaker 1: including the family of the little girl, at least the moms.
Speaker 3: Some of them, yes, are they know?
Speaker 1: And there are some lawmakers, There are some still police,
Speaker 1: There are some doctors would say, yeah, shaken baby syndrome
Speaker 1: is a real thing, and this child in particular ropes.
Speaker 1: I think it was the fact that little Nikki, to
Speaker 1: your old Nikki had some blunt force trauma. Now, the
Speaker 1: explanation was she had fallen out of the bed, but
Speaker 1: they thought she had been beaten.
Speaker 2: Yes, they said that they felt like because of the
Speaker 2: trauma to the head, that she had been beaten or shaken.
Speaker 2: But his story, Robertson's story has stayed true and the
Speaker 2: same all these years, saying that she was ill. He
Speaker 2: had been taking her to the hospital. She had severe
Speaker 2: viral and bacterial pneumonia. She had been given drugs and
Speaker 2: prescribed drugs by doctors that are now no longer allowed
Speaker 2: to be prescribed to children because I believe it affects
Speaker 2: their breathing, so it could stop your heart literally could
Speaker 2: be a cause of death. And so you've got these medications,
Speaker 2: you've got this severe viral and bacterial pnemonia, and this
Speaker 2: was not a healthy child. She had been in and
Speaker 2: out of the hospital for most of her little life,
Speaker 2: and then she fell out of the bed. And that's
Speaker 2: how he explains, or at least that's what he says happened,
Speaker 2: and that would possibly be responsible for the blunt force
Speaker 2: trauma that they see.
Speaker 1: Like you said, he's maintained his story throughout, so it's
Speaker 1: not just yes, they want the execution to stop, at
Speaker 1: least he and his attorneys. But they are they absolutely
Speaker 1: are proclaiming his innocence. This is a case that has
Speaker 1: been going on. They want him out of prison, not
Speaker 1: just off death row, and have maintained this for a
Speaker 1: long time that this guy and the other factor here
Speaker 1: right Robes, we discovered later.
Speaker 2: That he is autistic, yes, and so that was part
Speaker 2: of also the testimony used against him in his initial trial,
Speaker 2: that he wasn't as emotional as you would expect a
Speaker 2: father to be whose daughter was just pronounced dead. And
Speaker 2: so that same detective who testified against him has now
Speaker 2: come out very publicly and often saying he believes he's innocent,
Speaker 2: that he was wrong, that he misinterpreted ert Robertson's lack
Speaker 2: of empathy or lack of emotion and didn't realize that
Speaker 2: there was actually a clinical diagnosis behind why he acted
Speaker 2: and reacted the way he did.
Speaker 1: That's incredible that something like that could factor into a
Speaker 1: man possibly being put to death, Like, I'm just not
Speaker 1: know who. I didn't know he was autistic. He just
Speaker 1: his emotional reactions were enough to make somebody think he
Speaker 1: was guilty. This case is incredibly fascinating, and we keep
Speaker 1: learning more and more and more about it. Ropes. I'm
Speaker 1: still as we go through. We've been talking about the
Speaker 1: death penalty more and more here lately, and I can't
Speaker 1: isn't this the proof that this man shouldn't be executed,
Speaker 1: that everybody's fighting about it this much. Clearly we're not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure, And I say we talking about
Speaker 1: just as a society. Shouldn't that be enough to say
Speaker 1: we're not in agreement. It has to be one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 3: All of us. There's no taking it back.
Speaker 2: There's no exonerating someone if you do it posthumously, that
Speaker 2: the damage is done, there's no taking it back.
Speaker 3: This is permanent.
Speaker 2: This isn't like whoopsie, we put you in prison, which
Speaker 2: is still significant. I mean, his attorneys point out that
Speaker 2: he has spent the last twenty two years behind bars
Speaker 2: for a crime he didn't commit, and they had said
Speaker 2: that over and over again, and by the way, they
Speaker 2: also pointed to this statistic just for some perspective. Since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, at least forty parents and caregivers have
Speaker 2: now been exonerated after they were convicted for wrongful shake
Speaker 2: in baby syndrome. So this is not unusual. Since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two, for over the past thirty years, forty parents
Speaker 2: and caregivers have since been exonerated after they were already convicted.
Speaker 1: His conviction was what year. I can't believe we don't
Speaker 1: know this off the top of our heads, as much as.
Speaker 2: We've been I thought it was two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: That sounds right. Two thousand and two is when Nikki died. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I mean this is right around that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's in I just if we get away from
Speaker 1: a moral question of the death penalty. And this is
Speaker 1: not a matter of I believe we should have it or
Speaker 1: I believe we shouldn't have it. We all agree that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't put somebody to death that we are not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure of the guilt, the guilt at least,
Speaker 1: and it's just too much with this one Rogan. Some
Speaker 1: I guess on one side, I might say, well, I
Speaker 1: am one hundred percent sure, and the other side said,
Speaker 1: well I am one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 2: Two. But the question would be given the information we
Speaker 2: know now that we didn't know what the time of
Speaker 2: his trial, what a jury of his peers find him
Speaker 2: guilty or innocent. And I think that's a fair question
Speaker 2: to ask now twenty two years later, when we know more.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, I know this is a really bad comparison,
Speaker 2: but I think about college football, and you know, a
Speaker 2: ref makes a call right there in the field. Why
Speaker 2: wouldn't we want to go back now if we have
Speaker 2: better information to actually see if the ball was out
Speaker 2: of bounds. If we can do that and then have
Speaker 2: a better clear understanding, and then the ref can make
Speaker 2: a better choice based on better information, why wouldn't we
Speaker 2: want that for somebody whose life is on the line.
Speaker 1: Continuing with your football analogy, what if that play is
Speaker 1: the game winning one, then the game's over after a
Speaker 1: call we didn't review. This is what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: just in life and death. Now we have to have
Speaker 1: to be sure. Look, I'm glad no matter what, there
Speaker 1: are people who absolutely believe this man is a monster
Speaker 1: and he did something as heinous as it gets. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a two year old child who had health problems,
Speaker 1: and they believe this man beat his child to death.
Speaker 1: And you have another side to this story, and then
Speaker 1: you have science, and science was telling us Robes something
Speaker 1: different today than it was telling us thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: And I think the law says we're supposed to listen, right.
Speaker 3: I believe that is what justice is.
Speaker 2: It's not about defending the fact that you thought you
Speaker 2: were right thirty years ago, but actually examining whether or
Speaker 2: not you truly were.
Speaker 3: That's justice.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about where this case is now and
Speaker 1: all these developments that took place today. The court has
Speaker 1: stepped in and said, yes, we're going to stay the execution,
Speaker 1: but we haven't even told you, at least in this
Speaker 1: podcast about the other update. There was another huge development
Speaker 1: in this case this week, a development we thought was
Speaker 1: the one that might actually get him a stay of execution.
Speaker 2: We continue our conversation now about this major development in
Speaker 2: the case of fifty eight year old Robert Robertson. He
Speaker 2: was convicted of murdering his two year old daughter, Nicki,
Speaker 2: and the basis for that conviction was science that is
Speaker 2: now considered junk science.
Speaker 3: It's shaken baby syndrome.
Speaker 2: And after years and years, more than a decade of trying,
Speaker 2: his lawyers have finally gotten a stay of execution and
Speaker 2: a request for there to be a court hearing on
Speaker 2: this new evidence for there to be a reconsideration of
Speaker 2: new medical information that has come to light concerning how
Speaker 2: and why this man was convicted. And in this appeal,
Speaker 2: this is really interesting, Robertson's lawyers included along with that
Speaker 2: new scientific information that we now know, they actually say
Speaker 2: ten independent pathologists looked at that original medical examiner's autopsy
Speaker 2: of little Nikki and they concluded that Nicki died. The
Speaker 2: coroner's report that Nicki died from those blunt force head injuries,
Speaker 2: which is really what got him convicted, were not reliable.
Speaker 2: So ten independent pathologists. So the defense really put on
Speaker 2: an incredible, I don't want to say show, but just
Speaker 2: really produced a significant amount of evidence enough to sway
Speaker 2: this judge for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 1: And look, the other side will give you their witnesses
Speaker 1: and they're experts, and you're supposed to work all that
Speaker 1: out in court and let a jury decide. But again
Speaker 1: the point here being, the jury didn't get to hear
Speaker 1: some of the stuff we know not we know, yes,
Speaker 1: we just we know more.
Speaker 2: And there's something else the jury didn't get to hear,
Speaker 2: and it's something that actually was made or I guess
Speaker 2: there was some light shed on it in a podcast
Speaker 2: just a few days ago of Dayline podcast where we
Speaker 2: heard from for the first time Nicky's maternal grandfather, who
Speaker 2: told NBC's Lester Holds something we had not yet hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we thought this was the thing, right there was
Speaker 1: He's got so much Robert Robertson, so many motions out
Speaker 1: there trying to get the execution stopped, and we thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's running out of options. Next week is going to
Speaker 1: be it. And then this dateline thing comes up where
Speaker 1: the grandfather on the little baby Nicky's on the mom's side,
Speaker 1: said that he got a call when Nicky was in
Speaker 1: the hospital that a judge called that hospital and told
Speaker 1: them that the grandparents were actually the parents and that
Speaker 1: the grandparents had the right to make the call to
Speaker 1: take the child off life support, and they did do so.
Speaker 1: That same judge ends up signing the arrestaurant for Robert Robertson.
Speaker 1: That same judge ends up being the judge in his trial. Now,
Speaker 1: as you're hearing those facts laid out, you might go,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that doesn't sound right, well, because it's not.
Speaker 1: First of all, only Bert Roberson had the right to
Speaker 1: make that call.
Speaker 2: About that child, yes, and then so beyond that, it
Speaker 2: just screams of judicial misconduct. You know, this is somebody
Speaker 2: who clearly was overly involved from the actual decision regarding
Speaker 2: her death to who to arrest and then presiding over
Speaker 2: and you know, a judge again to make another sports reference.
Speaker 3: But much like a.
Speaker 2: Referee can absolutely sway, a jury can absolutely have an
Speaker 2: impact or an influence over how certain evidence is allowed,
Speaker 2: how it's received, how it's perceived that Durer instructions. There
Speaker 2: is so much influence that these judges have over these trials,
Speaker 2: So how could that possibly not be misconduct?
Speaker 1: I was shocked to hear. I mean, you just go
Speaker 1: to the I mean again, she was on life support,
Speaker 1: so we have to assume they didn't think she was
Speaker 1: going to do well, or maybe she wasn't going to
Speaker 1: make it. But still someone made the call about the
Speaker 1: life and death of his child and he didn't get
Speaker 1: to that right there strips wrights away from him, and
Speaker 1: he has a case and a cause there it's just
Speaker 1: too much. We're overwhelmed now with information of what the
Speaker 1: hell and we can't trust that, but that expert trust
Speaker 1: that it's too much just I know they've got to
Speaker 1: go through the legal process. But this seems don't you
Speaker 1: think Rope's going in the direction even if it's not
Speaker 1: an exoneration, they got to get him off.
Speaker 3: It feels like that's where it's headed.
Speaker 2: And we actually, I mean, I again am no legal expert,
Speaker 2: but just having covered it the way we have, I
Speaker 2: am certainly hopeful that that is the outcome.
Speaker 3: And to know that.
Speaker 2: Ultra conservative Republican lawmakers from Texas who are very pro
Speaker 2: death penalty all joined forces with Democrats in that state
Speaker 2: after reviewing all of the evidence and the things that
Speaker 2: we are now explaining to you here, that they all
Speaker 2: were on board with getting him and actually creating a
Speaker 2: political stunt to make sure he wasn't executed. With the
Speaker 2: little power that they had over the situation, I think
Speaker 2: speaks of volumes.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm smiling. You said they pulled off a political stunt.
Speaker 1: It was a bipartisan which is so rare. The last
Speaker 1: one there was one side. We're talking about Texas Republicans
Speaker 1: and Democrats working together. That should be enough great execution
Speaker 1: that Texas Republicans are working with their Democratic counter of
Speaker 1: arts to save a man's life who's on death row. Idea.
Speaker 3: That is all.
Speaker 2: Well, that's most of the proof that I need at
Speaker 2: this point. But again, certainly some news of relief for
Speaker 2: Robertson and his supporters, and I know some frustration for
Speaker 2: folks who think that this is exactly what should have happened,
Speaker 2: and they're frustrated by our very lengthy process to actually
Speaker 2: go through an execution, but certainly one that has to
Speaker 2: be the case because of something very much like this.
Speaker 2: We have to be sure and if we can't be sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that is just what most people who look
Speaker 2: at this case, even if they are pro death penalty,
Speaker 2: this is a this is a very specific situation. So
Speaker 2: we will continue to follow any new developments bring you
Speaker 2: the very latest. Thank you as always for listening to us.
Speaker 3: I made me wrote back alongside T. J.
Speaker 2: Holmes.
Speaker 3: We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: M