Why author John Grisham is batting for a death row convict in US

Best-selling novelist John Grisham is joining a long list of politicians, advocates, scientists and medical professionals to save an autistic man from an execution because of a wrongful conviction.

The renowned writer whose legal thrillers have been adapted into popular Hollywood films discussed Robert Roberson’s, 57, case on Tuesday.

Roberson is scheduled to be executed on October 17 in connection with the 2002 death of his two-year-old daughter Nikki.

Here’s what we know about the case.

The case

Roberson has spent more than 20 years on death row in Texas for fatally shaking his two-year-old daughter Nikki. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his petition last week.

If his execution by lethal injection goes through, he will be the first person executed in the United States based on the medical theory known as “shaken baby syndrome.”

Roberson’s attorneys requested that his death sentence be commuted in a 62-page clemency petition submitted to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. In the audacious petition, Roberson’s innocence is asserted, arguing that the offence for which he was charged never even occurred, not that the wrong guy was wrongfully convicted.

It says, “No offence occurred… Roberson is actually innocent of the offence for which he was convicted and sentenced to death based on pseudo-science that has since been discredited.”

The prisoner’s fate now rests with the courts or Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to whom the board reports.

This petition, thus, is making a last-ditch effort to save him.

Not only Grisham, but other well-known people, including several autism advocacy groups, 84 Texas politicians from both parties, over 30 well-known doctors and scientists, and 70 attorneys, have supported his case.

Key lapses in investigation

Roberson’s conviction, according to the clemency petition, was founded on three grave errors:

2. Medical staff believed Nikki had been severely shaken when she was brought to the hospital in a vegetative state in February 2002, but they did not consult her medical file.

3. Medical professionals and law enforcement declined to look into the matter further. The girl had undiagnosed pneumonia, had been taking medications that have since been determined to be life-threatening for children, and had a fever of 40.3 degrees Celsius just before she passed out. All of these symptoms could have contributed to her dire situation, but they were overlooked.

4. The petition contends that when medical professionals and investigators who interacted with Roberson—who was not aware of his autism—took his reserved manner and mistook it for the actions of a cold-blooded murderer rather than a sign of his illness.

The case’s main detective, Brian Wharton, who testified against Roberson during the trial, now feels that the prosecution’s whole theory was flawed.

He told The Guardian last year that there was neither a crime scene nor forensic evidence. Three simple words summed it up: shaken baby syndrome. He would be free today if it weren’t for them.

Grisham’s support

“What’s amazing about Robert’s case is that there was no crime,” Grisham told reporters. “In most death conviction cases, you’ve got a murder and somebody did it, but in Robert’s case there was no crime and yet we’re about to kill somebody for it in Texas. It’s so infuriating.”

“I just have a real anger at these cases. I can’t let them go, I think about them all the time. Especially a case like Roberts where we are a month away, the clock is ticking, and yet we have clear scientific proof that he didn’t kill Nikki," he said.

Grisham compared Roberson’s case to that of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who killed his three young children and was put to death by Texas in 2004. On the basis of forensic arson ideas that turned out to be pseudoscience, Willingham was charged with starting the fire in the family home.

“Twenty years ago Texas executed a guy for a crime that never occurred,” Grisham said. “Now here we are 20 years later and we’re down to another execution where there was no crime and where the science has been debunked. Texas is about to execute another innocent man.”

The former lawyer in criminal cases in Mississippi wrote his first novel, A Time to Kill, in 1989. The book went on to become one of his bestsellers. In 2006, he penned his first non-fiction book, The Innocent Man, which traced the life of a man wrongly convicted of rape and murder. After that, Grisham joined the boards of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, organisations that over the last 50 years had assisted in the release of at least 200 Americans on death row.

Two days before Roberson’s scheduled execution, his next book, Framed, will be published. The non-fiction book tells the true tales of ten people who were wrongfully convicted by a system that was tainted by racism, corruption, and faulty testimony.

He said, “I’m up to my ears in wrongful convictions.”

About shaken baby syndrome

The idea of child maltreatment known as “shattered baby syndrome,” or SBS for short, first surfaced in the early 1970s. It garnered attention as an explanation for why certain kids showed up sick, sometimes fatally sick, showing evidence of internal head trauma but little to no exterior harm.

Norman Guthkelch, a British paediatric neurosurgeon, was one of the first to support the hypothesis. In 1971, he suggested that the child’s severe shaking might be the reason.

However, some eminent scientists were sceptical of SBS’s credibility as a medical diagnostic and as a forensic technique applied in criminal cases. There are more than 80 different non-violent explanations for the symptoms, such as illness and falls, both of which Nikki’s case clearly proved.

Thousands of parents have been prosecuted for child abuse using the hypothesis, and Guthkelch has expressed concern that it is no longer credible, as per The Guardian.

Doubts surrounding the syndrome have evolved to such an extent that many authorities reject it.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 32 people who were convicted on the grounds of SBS have been cleared since 1993, indicating that concern has grown throughout the criminal judicial system.

With inputs from agencies