How a Podcast Could Spare the Life of a Convicted Death Row Inmate
Amy & T.J.
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The state of Texas is set to execute 58-year-old Robert Roberson next week, but his attorneys have filed a last minute request for a new trial based on a recent Dateline podcast. Roberson would be the first person to ever be put to death for shaken baby syndrome, following the 2002 death of his 2 year old daughter Nikki. The science he was convicted on is no longer regarded and is considered “junk science.” That information alone brought lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to intervene last year, to stay his execution, but that stay is up and Roberson time is up. Now, baby Nikki’s maternal grandfather is speaking up, telling a story, if true, of egregious conduct by the judge in this case from the hospital where Nikki died, all the way to the courtroom he presided over in Roberson’s trial.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:07.0 | The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, |
| 0:14.0 | until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. |
| 0:20.9 | America, y'all better work the hell up. |
| 0:22.9 | Bad things happens to good people in small towns. |
| 0:32.5 | Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to |
| 0:39.1 | binge the entire season, ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:48.3 | Hey there, folks. It is Wednesday, October the 8th. A man has been on death row for decades but a podcast interview is going to be |
| 0:58.3 | the thing that could get him off welcome to this episode of Amy and T.J. Robs this is probably |
| 1:05.0 | going to be a good case study for why we should not be executing people if somebody could be on |
| 1:09.6 | death row for almost 30 years. |
| 1:11.9 | And one podcast interview is the thing that gets us to rethink the case. |
| 1:17.6 | That's where we are in this case in Texas. |
| 1:19.1 | Yeah, and this is a case that has so many people involved for a very long time. |
| 1:24.4 | This is a case we have covered several times on our podcasts because you had an |
| 1:29.3 | entire state legislator legislature actually coming together republicans and democrats trying to get |
| 1:35.6 | this guy's execution state and it worked texas texas first of all trying to save a death row |
| 1:42.9 | inmate two bipartisan, bipartisan in Texas. |
| 1:46.4 | Yes. |
| 1:46.7 | So that lets you know what the hell is going on. |
| 1:47.9 | Yeah, and they managed to get this man, Robert Robertson, 58 years old, a stay of execution for just one year. |
| 1:55.9 | Unfortunately, and I say unfortunately for people who do believe in his innocence, he is set to die next week. |
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