Robert Roberson’s Death Penalty Case Shows How Justice System Fails People With Autism

That is The Marshall Challenge’s Closing Argument publication, a weekly deep dive right into a key felony justice subject. Need this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters.

Robert Roberson, who faces execution in Texas on Oct. 17, is the most recent dying row prisoner to see a shiny marketing campaign to save lots of his life. He was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in 2002 on a principle of “shaken child syndrome.” A rising refrain, from the lead detective in his case to novelist John Grisham, is arguing that he’s harmless and Curtis’ dying, whereas a tragedy, was not against the law. He’d be the primary particular person ever executed primarily based on shaken child syndrome, even because the prognosis faces rising scrutiny within the courts.

However one other reality about Roberson deserves extra consideration to make sense of his story — his prognosis of autism spectrum dysfunction.

From the second he confirmed up on the hospital along with his daughter turning blue, his case reveals the methods the felony justice system can fail individuals with diagnoses like autism. Roberson’s execution has been scheduled amid a wave of consideration to this topic from researchers, journalists and help organizations, who provide guides for autistic individuals and their mother and father on learn how to work together with police.

My colleagues have reported on how individuals with autism expertise jail, for instance, in addition to encounters with police, which might flip lethal when officers misread their conduct as suspicious. Some lawmakers are attempting to cut back the danger of escalation and tragedy. For instance, when wanting up a license plate, Texas police could now see an alert indicating {that a} driver could have issue speaking.

However Roberson’s case reveals what can occur even earlier than the police get entangled. When he took his unconscious daughter to an emergency room within the small east Texas metropolis of Palestine, in 2002, a nurse discovered it unusual that he’d gotten her dressed earlier than leaving their home, in accordance with courtroom data. Later, as he confirmed detectives round his kitchen, he paused to make a sandwich. Former murder Detective Brian Wharton recalled discovering Roberson’s have an effect on disconcerting, saying, “He’s not getting mad, he’s not getting unhappy, he’s simply not proper.”

At Roberson’s 2003 trial, prosecutors used these particulars to painting him as callous and remorseless. However at a 2018 attraction listening to, psychologist Diane Mosnik mentioned autism helped clarify his deviations from social norms (just like the sandwich), the misalignment of his emotions and expressions (the flat have an effect on), and his reliance on scripted conduct (dressing his daughter). She discovered his social problem-solving expertise have been equal to these of an 11-year-old, noting his struggles to grasp sarcasm and sincerity.

All of this, Roberson’s legal professionals now say, led nurses, medical doctors, police, prosecutors and jurors to mistrust Roberson’s story — that his daughter fell away from bed — probably making them extra prone to see proof of abuse in difficult medical findings.

Allyson Mitchell, the Anderson County district legal professional who sought Roberson’s execution date, didn’t reply to my request for remark. However she prompt on the 2018 listening to that Roberson’s lack of emotion is likely to be chalked as much as delinquent persona dysfunction.

Mosnik, the psychologist, countered that individuals with delinquent persona dysfunction sometimes possess robust social expertise.

Final week, the Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals declined to halt Roberson’s execution and contemplate his claims difficult the shaken child syndrome prognosis in his case. He could attraction to federal courts, but when they don’t intervene, his destiny will lie with the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott. Quite a few autism and parental rights organizations despatched letters to the board and governor asking them to spare Roberson’s life. Abbott has solely commuted one dying sentence throughout his 9 years in workplace.

There isn’t a information to help the concept that autistic individuals have confronted extra wrongful convictions than anybody else. Police are sometimes suspicious when kids die and their mother and father don’t conform to socially anticipated conduct. When detectives interrogated Melissa Lucio in 2007, following her younger daughter’s dying, they questioned her slumped posture and lack of eye contact. She can also be dealing with execution in Texas, and her legal professionals argue that her conduct could be defined by grief and previous trauma.

Nonetheless, there’s rising analysis into how autistic individuals could be wrongly convicted. Final yr, a staff of psychologists discovered that individuals usually mistake their communication types for mendacity. Creator Dina Nayeri not too long ago examined how harmless individuals with autism are particularly weak to some police interrogation methods. (The coaching firm she focuses on, John E. Reid and Associates, Inc., has criticized her conclusions.)

I’ve additionally seen a lot of instances — some involving the dying penalty — the place there isn’t a doubt about guilt, however protection legal professionals level to autism as they search to elucidate the crime and reduce punishment. Lately, 22-year-old Patrick Dai pleaded responsible to threatening Jewish college students at Cornell College final yr. In search of leniency for this federal hate crime, his lawyer mentioned Dai really supported Israel and needed to spark sympathy for Jews. “Patrick’s flawed logic is a results of his autism,” the lawyer wrote to the choose.

Federal prosecutors known as these “self-serving” claims after the very fact. Nevertheless it’s straightforward to think about extra debates like this one as consciousness of autism grows all through the felony justice system.

The controversy about autism in Roberson’s case comes amid a small surge in executions. South Carolina on Friday plans to hold out its first deadly injection since 2011, adopted by executions subsequent week in 4 different states. Alabama will try the second nitrogen fuel execution in U.S. historical past. And Missouri will search to execute Marcellus Williams, although, as with Roberson, there’s a fierce, ongoing courtroom battle over whether or not he’s harmless.