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BEFORE THE GOVERNOR OF
THE STATE OF TEXAS AND THE TEXAS BOARD
OF PARDONS AND PAROLES
IN RE ROBERT LESLIE ROBERSON III,
Petitioner.
PETITION FOR COMMUTATION OF DEATH SENTENCE TO A
LESSER PENALTY, OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE, A 180-DAY
REPRIEVE, AND REQUEST FOR AN INTERVIEW AND HEARING ON
THE MATTER
Robert Leslie Roberson is scheduled for execution on
October 17, 2024
Gretchen Sims Sween Callie Heller
Texas Bar No. 24041996 Texas Bar No. 24101897
PO Box 5083 Western District of Oklahoma
Austin, Texas 78763 Federal Defender Office
(214) 557-5779 Capital Habeas Unit
(512) 551-9448 fax 215 Dean A. McGee, Suite 707
Oklahoma City, OK 73102
(405) 609-5975
(405) 609-5932 fax
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TO THE GOVERNOR AND THE HONORABLE MEMBERS OF THE
TEXAS BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES:
Robert Leslie Roberson III requests that the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles (“Board”) recommend, and the Governor grant, commutation of death
sentence to a lesser penalty. In the alternative, Mr. Roberson requests that the
Board recommend, and the Governor grant, a reprieve of execution for 180 days
so the Board and Governor may give this application appropriate
consideration. Mr. Roberson requests an interview, and a hearing on the
matter.1
INTRODUCTION
Robert Roberson is innocent.
Evidence that his jury never heard proves no crime occurred.
Robert Roberson is an innocent man. This is not a case where the State got
the wrong person. Instead, a crime was alleged—but none actually occurred.
Robert was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death after his
chronically ill two-year-old daughter, Nikki, died. He was arrested before Nikki
was even taken off life support. He was barred from visiting her in the hospital.
His parental rights were summarily terminated without a hearing. He was
1 Citation note: “RR” refers to the Reporter’s Record of the 2003 trial; “EHRR”
refers to the Reporter’s Record of the 2018-2021 evidentiary hearing; “CR” refers to the
Clerk’s Record. The first number in the citation is the volume number; the second
number is the page number or range.
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thrown in a jail suicide cell, without access to a lawyer. When a lawyer was finally
appointed for him because he was indigent, that lawyer, without doing any
investigation, insisted that the State was right: Robert must have shaken his
daughter and caused her condition, regardless of his insistence that he loved his
little girl and would not have done anything to harm her.
We now know that his conviction was based on three grave mistakes. First,
when Robert brought Nikki to the hospital, medical personnel rushed to judge
him based on incorrect presumptions and ignorance of her actual medical
condition. Second, law enforcement accepted the doctors’ assumptions that her
condition was caused by abuse and did not investigate further. Third, hospital
staff and law enforcement, who did not know Robert, viewed his non-neurotypical
demeanor, a symptom of his Autism, as reflecting a lack of feeling regarding his
daughter’s plight—a far cry from the truth.
Robert—a poor, single father with an undiagnosed developmental
disability (Autism)—had fought to obtain custody of his chronically ill little girl.
Robert w Nikki, Fall 2001
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Nikki died just two months after he was awarded custody. Nikki’s death,
however, was not a crime—unless it is a crime for a parent to be unable to explain
complex medical problems that even trained medical professionals failed to
understand at the time.
We now know that Nikki’s lungs were severely infected and straining for
oxygen—for days or even weeks before her collapse. A recent reexamination of
lung tissue collected during her autopsy has revealed that both a chronic
interstitial viral pneumonia and a secondary acute bacterial pneumonia were
ravishing her lungs, causing sepsis and then septic shock.2
Images of Lung Tissue under a Microscope
2 See EX2 (Affidavit of Dr. Francis Green).
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