Texas has executed four people so far this year – a low number, considering the state often executed that many per month during the 1990s and 2000s. No executions were scheduled at all this summer and only two are set for the remainder of 2025.
The first is for Blaine Milam on Sept. 25. Milam was 18 years old and living in a trailer in rural Northeast Texas in 2008 when he and his girlfriend, Jesseca Carson, were accused of murdering Carson’s 13-month-old daughter, Amora. Carson told an investigator she believed her child had been possessed by the devil and admitted to killing her. She is currently serving life without parole. Milam confessed to the killing as well but his trial attorney argued that Carson was responsible for Amora’s murder, suggesting she was under the influence of postpartum depression. Milam was convicted and sent to death row in 2010.
Since then, Milam has argued that he is intellectually disabled and that none of the evidence prosecutors presented at trial actually connects him to the murder. The appeals have been denied. In July, attorneys with the Texas Defender Service sued the district attorney of Rusk County, where Milam was tried, to try to force the release of DNA evidence found on Milam’s clothing during the murder investigation. The DNA evidence has not been turned over.
The state has also scheduled another execution for Robert Roberson, who was almost put to death on October 17, 2024, before a bipartisan group of representatives in the Texas House intervened to save his life. Roberson has been on death row for 22 years for the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in 2002.
Roberson explained Nikki’s death at his trial and in subsequent appeals by saying that she fell from her crib and hit her head in the early morning hours of Jan. 31, 2002, after suffering for days from vomiting, diarrhea, and a 104-degree fever. After she was rushed to an emergency room, doctors concluded that Nikki was a victim of shaken baby syndrome, though she had no skull fractures, no neck injuries, and no other signs of battery. At the time, shaken baby syndrome was essentially a medical diagnosis of murder – if the symptoms of SBS were present, that meant the child had suffered head trauma, and whoever had been with the child was the perpetrator. Roberson was convicted on the basis of the theory.
“The wrongful conviction of Robert Roberson has been an ongoing tragedy for over 20 years.” – Author John Grisham
But in the last 10 years, shaken baby syndrome has been questioned by scientists, with advocates like the Innocence Project describing it as junk science. In the months leading up to Roberson’s scheduled execution last year, novelist John Grisham, TV personality Dr. Phil, and a host of experts argued that Texas was about to put an innocent man to death. The Texas House of Representatives Jurisprudence Committee took the wholly unprecedented step of subpoenaing Roberson to appear at the state Capitol to discuss the case on the day his execution was to occur. Prison officials, aided by Attorney General Ken Paxton, forbade Roberson to appear, but the subpoena caused the Texas Supreme Court to cancel his execution, four hours after it was to have occurred.
In February, Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, presented new scientific evidence of his innocence to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, asking the court to declare Roberson innocent, grant him a new trial, or at least send his case back to the district court for further fact-finding. She included letters supporting clemency for Roberson from dozens of individuals and groups, including the Texas lawmakers mentioned earlier, 34 scientists and medical professionals, 70 attorneys who have represented people wrongfully accused under the shaken baby hypothesis, and family and friends of Roberson.
But in July, the state of Texas once more scheduled Roberson’s execution, this time for Oct. 16, exactly one year after the previous attempt, minus a day. Sween filed a motion to cancel the execution, to allow the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals time to evaluate the new evidence in the case. The motion has not yet been granted.
So Roberson’s army of supporters is mobilizing again. A group of exonerees held a press conference a week ago to urge Texas not to execute him. The lead detective in the original investigation into Roberson’s case, Brian Wharton, is once again granting interviews to discuss why he now believes Roberson is innocent. Grisham announced that he has written a new book about Roberson to come out next summer titled Shaken: The Rush to Execute an Innocent Man.
“The wrongful conviction of Robert Roberson has been an ongoing tragedy for over 20 years,” Grisham said. “If it now becomes a wrongful execution, it will live in infamy.”
This article appears in September 19 • 2025.
