Robert Roberson is again approaching execution in Texas in shaken baby case

LIVINGSTON, Texas (AP) — Robert Roberson was calm and hopeful as he pondered his mortality and whether he could again avoid becoming the first person in the U.S. executed for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

With days to go before his scheduled Oct. 16 execution, Roberson maintained his innocence in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the east Texas city of Palestine. He is set to die by lethal injection nearly a year to the day after a group of Texas lawmakers, who say he is innocent, secured an extraordinary last-minute postponement as Roberson waited outside the death chamber in Huntsville.

Roberson said he was placing his hopes for another execution stay in the hands of his lawyers, his supporters and God.

“I’m not going to stress out and stuff because I know God has it, you know. He’s in control. No matter what, God’s in control, you know, and he does have the last say, you know,” Roberson, 58, told The Associated Press last week as he sat behind a glass partition in the visiting area of the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where Texas' male death row inmates are housed.

During an hourlong interview, Roberson said he thinks about his daughter every day and what kind of life she would have today.

Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued he hit his daughter and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma and that she died from injuries related to shaken baby syndrome. Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.

The diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Roberson’s attorneys have argued his undiagnosed autism helped convict him as authorities and medical personnel felt he didn’t act like a concerned parent because his flat affect was seen as a sign of guilt.

Last year, Roberson was on the verge of being put to death when a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering on the night of his scheduled execution, including an unprecedented intervention by a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, stayed his lethal injection. In July, a judge set the new execution date, Roberson's third.

During his interview with the AP, Roberson often would not keep eye contact and would repeat words or phrases — behaviors that experts say are associated with autism.

“They assumed (guilt) because of the way I was acting, you know. And I didn’t know I was autistic, you know, until years and years later, you know,” said Roberson, who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until 2018.

Roberson’s supporters and his legal team are again holding rallies and asking state and federal appeals courts and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to halt his execution. His supporters include both liberal and ultraconservative lawmakers, Texas GOP megadonor and conservative activist Doug Deason, bestselling author John Grisham and Brian Wharton, the former police detective who helped put together the case against him.

“The whole world is watching. Texas, do not kill this innocent man,” Wharton said during a rally Saturday outside the Texas Capitol in Austin.

On Wednesday afternoon a bipartisan group of four lawmakers met with Roberson for an hour at the Polunsky Unit. State Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican, said he believes Roberson deserves a new trial.

“Doing that strengthens the system and will save what I believe is an innocent life in Robert Robertson,” Leach told reporters outside. “What a blessing it was to just spend an hour with him. And I’m hopeful and prayerful that the right thing will happen between now and next Thursday.”

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as some medical experts and other family members of Nikki, maintain the girl died because of child abuse and that Roberson had a history of hitting his daughter.

“It’s been a long time coming. … In my opinion he did it, 100%,” Matthew Bowman, Nikki's half brother, told reporters in July. Bowman declined to speak with the AP.

Abbott's office did not immediately reply to emails seeking comment. Abbott has the power to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve.

Roberson said he never hurt his daughter and had been working to turn his life around and take care of Nikki after spending time in prison for burglary and theft by check.

“I never shook her or hit her,” Roberson said, adding he never disciplined his daughter “because she was so tiny.”

Shaken baby syndrome has come under scrutiny in recent years as some lawyers and medical experts have argued the diagnosis has wrongly sent people to prison. Prosecutors and medical societies say it remains valid.

“It’s no longer a mystery what happened to Nikki. It was not shaking. It was her chronic, serious health conditions," Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s lawyers, said at Saturday’s rally. "A crime didn’t occur.”

But in a Sept. 26 op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, three pediatricians, including two with the Yale School of Medicine, said they reviewed the case and “are convinced that Nikki was a victim of child abuse.”

Roberson was arrested after he took Nikki to a hospital when she became unresponsive following a fall off their bed. He said he had never heard of shaken baby syndrome.

“It was bad enough losing my little girl. And then when they accused me of it, I couldn’t believe it,” Roberson said.

In a press release issued after Roberson’s execution was delayed last year as well as in recent court filings, Paxton’s office has stressed that “this was no mere shaken baby case but involved a child who was beaten and received multiple blows to the head.” Paxton’s office said the jury “did not convict Roberson on the basis of ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome.’”

Yet one of the jurors who convicted Roberson, Terre Compton, told lawmakers last year that, “everything that was presented to us was all about shaken baby syndrome. That is what our decision was based on.”

Grisham, who is writing a book about the case, said Roberson's trial “was grossly unfair” because his autism contributed to people believing he was guilty and his defense lawyers told jurors it was a case of shaken baby syndrome.

Roberson said he remains optimistic he will one day get a chance to prove his innocence with a new trial.

“I’m not scared to die, but I’m not ready to die, you know. I would like to believe God has more for me to do and stuff, you know,” Roberson said.

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Robert Roberson waits to be interviewed in a locked visitation cell at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. Roberson, who has maintained his innocence on death row for more than 20 years, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 16, for the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

Robert Roberson is led to a locked visitation cell for an interview with The Associated Press at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

Robert Roberson speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

The Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, is seen on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

Robert Roberson speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

Robert Roberson waits to be interviewed in a locked visitation cell at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. Roberson, who has maintained his innocence on death row for more than 20 years, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 16, for the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. (AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)

MILAN (AP) — The gala crowd at Milan's Teatro alla Scala cheered the season premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk '' with a 12-minute standing ovation Sunday, as the storied theater synonymous with the Italian repertoire opened with a Russian melodrama for the second time since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The crowd of luminaries fully embraced stage director Vasily Barkhatov's bold telling of merchant wife Katerina Izmajilova's fall into a murderous love triangle against the backdrop of Stalin's Soviet Union, right up to the jarring final scene with a Soviet truck barreling into a wedding party, and two characters perishing in burst of flames.

U.S. soprano Sara Jakubiak was showered with carnations and cheers for her tireless portrayal of Katarina, the title character, over the 2 hour and 40 minute opera, and the audience cheered its appreciation for conductor Riccardo Chailly, making his last Dec. 7 gala premiere appearance as music director.

“No one ever expects this,'' Jakubiak said backstage of the enthusiastic reception. ”I am just so happy.''

While the 2022 gala season premier of “Boris Godunov” drew protests from the Ukraininan community for highlighting Russian culture in the wake of the invasion, the premiere of "Lady Macbeth'' inspired a flash mob demonstrating for peace.

Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.

A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’

Another, larger, demonstration of several dozen people in front of city hall called for freedom for the Palestinians and an end to colonialism, but was kept far from arriving dignitaries by a police cordon. Demonstrations against war and other forms of inequality have long countered the glitz of the gala season premiere that draws leading figures from culture, business and politics dressed in their finest frocks.

Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli was joined by the senator for life Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in the royal box. Italian pop stars Mahmoud and Achille Lauro were also among those in attendance.

Chailly began working with Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the success “Boris Godunov,'' which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia’s politicians from its culture.

But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture.

Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’

“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ Chailly told a news conference last month.

La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov " at the theater whose history is tied to the Italian repertoire.

‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the news conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin's own.’’

Jakubiak, 47, made her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she self-immolated to kill herself and her treacherous second husband's new lover — deviating from the original story's drowning. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.

“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”

Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.

“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.''

Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.

Barkhatov, who at 42 has a flourishing international career, said “Lady Macbeth” is a “very brave and exciting" choice for La Scala's season opening.

Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.

For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a dark restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place — all grim and dingy.

Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’

“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.

Stage director Vasily Barkhatov sits during an interview with The Associated Press prior to the dressed rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

External view of Teatro all Scala ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

Soprano Sara Jakubiak has her makeup done ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

The stage is prepared ahead of the dressed rehearsal of the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Dmitri Shostakovich, at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)