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Dateline NBC

The Last Appeal - Ep. 1: Nikki

Dateline NBC

NBC News

True Crime, Culture, Social, Society & Culture, News

4.438K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When 2-year-old Nikki is rushed to a Texas hospital and doesn’t survive, her father, Robert Roberson, is accused of causing her death. Prosecutors say he shook and beat her in a case of "shaken baby syndrome."

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Your morning

0:03.0

I'm going to

0:07.0

Mr. Hope.

0:12.0

How are you?

0:13.0

I'm blessed, I'm blessed.

0:16.0

I'm sitting in a plastic chair inside the notorious Polanski unit in West Livingston, Texas, death row.

0:25.6

Across from me, a man named Robert Robertson.

0:27.6

We got a lot to talk about.

0:29.6

Yes, sir.

0:30.6

He's a big guy, more than six feet, wearing a white prison jumpsuit.

0:35.6

We're so close I could shake his hand,

0:38.5

if not for the pain of plexiglass between us.

0:42.3

On October 16th, 2025, Robert is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

0:49.8

How are you preparing for your own death, your own execution?

0:53.1

I'm at peace if it happens, but I'm not ready because I don't think I should be executed

0:58.3

when I'm innocent.

1:00.9

In 2003, a jury convicted Robert of murdering his two-year-old daughter, Nikki.

1:07.2

Prosecutors say the evidence is overwhelming.

1:10.5

Mr. Robertson took the life of his daughter.

1:13.3

And I just remember that cold face, and I look, and that poor little girl was just, she was dead.

1:19.0

Some in Nikki's family believe Roberts' date with death is long overdue.

1:23.9

This is his third execution date. It's time.

...

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