ANDERSON COUNTY, Texas — Family members of Nikki Curtis, the 2-year-old daughter of East Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson, have written a letter to the Texas House committee that stopped Roberson's execution earlier this month, saying they're convinced he's guilty despite his claims of innocence.
Roberson III, 57, was set to be executed Thursday, Oct. 17, in connection with the 2003 Anderson County conviction in the death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis, and he has said he's innocent for more than two decades. But a subpoena filed by the Texas House on Criminal Jurisprudence seeking to have Roberson testify ultimately led to the Texas Supreme Court halting his execution.
Amid several legal hurdles, Nikki's family, including her brother Matthew Bowman, her aunt Jessica Rachelle Carriere and her grandfather Larry Gene Bowman, is saying that people are overeager to proclaim Roberson's innocence and he was repeatedly abusive to Nikki. They believe that his death sentence should move forward.
"Given the one-sided picture of Mr. Roberson that has been recently portrayed in the media, we feel obliged to speak up and defend the real victim in this case whose life was taken by the hands of Robert Roberson, Nikki Curtis. Nikki’s story must be told," the family's statement read.
Toward the end of last week, State Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, and other representatives filed a document denouncing the committee's actions and saying Nikki and her family deserve justice. Now, Harris delivered the letter from Nikki's family to the Texas House on Criminal Jurisprudence.
In the letter, the family said he should be executed just because he is a "bad man."
"We believe his death sentence should be carried out based on the facts of this case, which remain true today, as well the overwhelming evidence that was presented at the trial that led to the jury’s verdict," the statement read.
Roberson's defense team has claimed for several years that Roberson's conviction came out of the claim of "Shaken Baby Syndrome," and that has since been proven to be unreliable or junk science. But the family disagrees with the notion that Roberson was convicted solely on "Shaken Baby Syndrome."
"Furthermore, the shaken baby theory, upon which much of your hearing relied, was already used by Roberson’s defense team in the original trial and found not to be credible," the statement said.
In the letter, the family explains that when Nikki was taken to the hospital, she had extensive bruising to her chin, face, ears, eyes and mouth, a handprint on her face, a bruised and mushy back of skull. A medical examiner found that Nikki died from blunt force head injuries, not because she was shaken. No one at the 2003 trial said she died from being shaken.
The letter states the medical examiner in 2016 also said she found bruising on her head, injuries in her mouth, trauma to her spine and her entire brain. The letter claims that Roberson had a long history of sexually and physically abusing Nikki Curtis and another young girl.
"Despite all of these facts we all kept an open mind and were ready to receive new information leading up to and during the trial that might have shown him to be innocent. The only thing we have ever wanted was to know what happened to Nikki, and what caused her death," the statement read. "After hearing countless hours of testimony that was presented, we remain convinced that Mr. Roberson is guilty and directly responsible for Nikki’s death."
The family said that they have nothing against those who are proclaiming Roberson's innocence, but they wish to have the facts they presented included in the story as well.
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