The Texas Supreme Court halted the scheduled execution of Robert Leslie Roberson III late Thursday night, an extraordinary development in one of the year’s most controversial death penalty cases.

The 57-year-old Texas man was set to become the first person in the United States to be executed under the widely criticized “shaken baby syndrome” hypothesis until the state’s highest civil court intervened. The order capped a head-spinning week of legal maneuvers initiated by a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers.