Last October, the Texas Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution for Robert Roberson, a clearly innocent autistic man who has been in solitary confinement on death row for 22 years after being convicted of the murder of his two-year-old daughter Nikki.

In 2003, Roberson was found guilty of having shaken the chronically ill toddler to death, causing her to die from “Shaken Baby Syndrome.” However, we now know a lot more about that diagnosis than we did back then, and it’s now fairly evident that there is no way he could be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Unfortunately, Attorney General Ken Paxton managed to convince another Texas judge, Judge Austin Reeve Jackson, to let him kill Roberson this October 16.

Just so we’re clear — I am not saying that anyone should go around shaking babies. That is a poor idea! It is child abuse.

What I am saying is that we know now that the triad of retinal hemorrhages, subdural hematoma, and encephalopathy once used to definitively diagnose “Shaken Baby Syndrome” is no longer considered to be pathognomonic — even by many of those who still generally believe in it. There are other things that can cause these symptoms as well, and in this case, Nikki had multiple other health issues and reasons to consider a differential diagnosis.

Via The Innocence Project:

A differential diagnosis would have required considering, for instance, the facts that, days after her birth, Nikki had the first of many infections that proved resistant to multiple antibiotics, including chronic ear infections that persisted even after she had had tubes surgically implanted. She also had a history of unexplained “breathing apnea” that caused her to suddenly stop breathing, collapse, and turn blue.

The week before her death, Nikki had been vomiting, coughing, and having diarrhea. When her symptoms didn’t stop after five days, Mr. Roberson and his mother took Nikki to their local emergency room in Palestine, Texas, where a doctor prescribed Phenergan, a potent drug that now carries an FDA black-box warning against being prescribed to children of Nikki’s age and with her condition. Nikki was sent home. Her condition did not improve and, that night, her temperature rose to 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit. The next morning, Mr. Roberson took her to a pediatrician, who sent the toddler home, despite a fever of 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and prescribed more Phenergan, in cough syrup with codeine — an opioid now restricted for children under 18 by the FDA due to its risks of causing breathing difficulties and death. Nikki’s toxicology report showed lethal levels of the respiratory-suppressing Phenergan still in her system.

. . .