I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers, cheers, cheers. I've always been a glass half-full kind of guy. And now, I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, their funny and my candid. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half-full. Search Glass Half-full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. You're about to be put to death. You're sure. I have to ask you, did you harm your daughter, Nikki? No, sir, I did not. How am I daughter? Did you ever violently shake her? No, sir. You did nothing that led to her death? No, sir. Robert Robertson is scheduled to die on October 16th. He's been on death row in Texas for 22 years. Convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter, Nikki. Robert insists he's innocent. From the beginning, he said Nikki fell out of bed and hit her head. And you told the medical staff that she had fallen. Yes, sir. And what did they say to that? They didn't blame my story. They called the detectors in the police department in. Did you understand why? I didn't understand because I brought her to the hospital and stuff, you know? The next thing you know, the way there's actually kind of funniest stuff, strange stuff. I thought, I did something, you know. Robert swears he would have never hurt his little girl. I'm not sure what happened to her because I can't explain what happened to her exactly. The state says it knows exactly what happened. Based on the totality of the evidence, is that stated a murder to place here? But what if Robert is telling the truth? I saw Robert was thinking many times what I saw was 11th Father. If they go through with it, they're killing an innocent man. I'm Lester Holt and this is The Last Appeal, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 2, I'm astonished. 2234, we'll be chatting like this. Hello. Hello. Grachan. Pleasure. Thank you so much. Grachan's twin doesn't look like the kind of lawyer who would pick a fight with the state of Texas. You're from Texas, right? Right here. Oh my goodness. She's five foot two, calm, measured, approachable. But beneath that demeanor, Grachan is a bulldog, relentless. I just how he said that hunger I wanted to do something meaningful. She began her career as an actress in local theater productions. But in her mid-30s, she gave up the stage for law school. I always had this sort of dueling force in myself, the sort of artist, and then the social activists, and had trouble putting them together. About a decade ago, Grachan was working at a Texas Public Defender's Office that handles death penalty cases. When she first heard the name Robert Robertson. Turns out Robert's upcoming execution on October 16th is not the first time he's had a date to die. This was like April 2016, and he had a June 2016 execution date. So it was a crisis situation. There was this commotion with Robert who was trying to get lawyers to take on his case. He long claimed he was innocent, and yet nobody had ever investigated that claim. So one of her colleagues asked her to take a look at Robert's case. Stacks of paperwork landed on her desk. Grachan had no clue whether or not Robert was innocent. But she wanted to know more after learning that shaken baby syndrome had been a key argument to prove Robert's guilt. So I said yes, not really knowing entirely what it was getting into, and there was that race against the clock. Got a PhD in shaken baby. The theory of shaken baby syndrome was this. If a child showed three symptoms swelling in the brain, bleeding on the brain, and bleeding behind the eyes, also known as the triad, there was only one cause, violent shaking. A young British nanny went to America for a job opportunity. Now she's in big trouble, accused of shaking a baby to death. Most of America first heard of shaken baby syndrome in 1997, because of a case that made international headlines. Today we focus on what has become known as the nanny trial. Louise Woodward, a British nanny, was charged with murder when Matthew Epen, an eight-month-old baby, died in her care. Doctors found that triad of symptoms, concluding Matthew, had been shaken to death. An angry Woodward lost control, violently shook the little boy. At her trial, Woodward's attorney Barry Shack argued that shaken baby syndrome was junk science. That's not true, that's not science, that's based on the data. The jury, sided with the prosecution. After 27 hours of deliberation, the jury and the so-called nanny trial of 19-year-old Louise Woodward came in with a conviction. The nanny trial sparked an awareness campaign. Billboards on highways, urgent public service announcements. Some things you shake, some things you don't. Never, never, never shake a baby. Prosecutors began to use shaken baby syndrome to charge people with crimes, like child abuse or murder. In courtrooms from coast to coast, convictions piled up. Robert Robertson's was one of them. But over time, certainty about the shaken baby diagnosis crumbled. Obviously shaking a baby can cause catastrophic damage. But new research proved that triad of symptoms could be explained by other things, like a fall, an infection, a loss of oxygen. Even Dr. Norman Goughkeldsch, who first suggested the theory in the early 1970s, reversed course. Warning that prosecutors were overcharging people. Here he is in a 2015 interview with the Retro Report. I was against defining this thing as a syndrome in the first instance. To go on to say, every time you see it, it's a crime. It became a sort of easy way into jail. Gretchen thought the controversy about shaken baby syndrome was an opening for Robert. The shaken baby diagnosis used to convict him had been discredited. In 2013, Texas had passed a law enabling people convicted on the basis of outdated or discredited science to file something commonly called a junk science writ to request a new day in court. As Robert's 2016 execution date was fast approaching, Gretchen made her move. We filed within days of the execution. Literally, we ran a box down the street to the court to make sure they, back in that point, they wanted paper copies. And make sure they had it, we had to file it in, palacing itself. Clock is ticking. It was a Hail Mary, and it worked. A judge halted Robert's execution, but Gretchen's work was just getting started. She'd won Robert a new hearing, a chance to argue that he should be given a new trial. It was going to be an uphill battle. She had to counter the doctors who testified that Nikki had been shaken and abused. So if Nikki wasn't the victim of shaken baby, could there be a different explanation? Gretchen was determined to find out. I almost cannot believe what I'm reading. She was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Megowitz, and this is Trace of Suspession, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Listen for free each week or unlock new episodes early and enjoy Add Free Listening by subscribing to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor, host of the podcast The Drink with Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrities, musicians, athletes over a drink of their choice for candid conversations about how they made it there. With actor comedian, host Joel McHale, I could barely stop laughing. You know Joel from Community or the Soup, his new show Animal Control. He asked for four bottles of Washington State wine for our interview. He has news about whether there's a community movie coming. He tells the story of how he got one of his first big acting gigs by lying about his height. And you have to stay through the credits. He's so funny. We have behind the scenes bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you'll listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode I get together with music superstar Charlie Pooth to talk about his nailing the national anthem at this year's Super Bowl. And the inspiration for his new album, drawn from a line about him in a recent Taylor Swift song. You can get our conversation now for re wherever you download your podcasts. Gretchen Swind had stopped the clock on Robert's execution. She'd won him a hearing, forcing Texas to reexamine the shaken baby science that helped convict Robert. But before she faced a judge, Gretchen wanted to dissect the evidence and find out if anything could have been overlooked. She began by learning about Nikki's medical history. When I spoke with Nikki's grandparents Larry and Verna Bowman, they told me Nikki had always been a healthy little girl. I mean, over in regular doctor visits, she never really had no problems. She had her little bouts with cold and stuff like that, but there was no. I sure see it, it helped. But that's not what Gretchen read in Nikki's medical records, far from it. I started looking at it, it's like this child has been sick from day one. If you look at her medical records, you see a child who had been sick almost her entire life, starting at eight days old. In Nikki's short life, she'd suffered from constant infections, repeated fevers, possible seizures. Gretchen saw that Nikki had been taken to a doctor more than 40 times before Robert had custody of her. Not only that, she learned Nikki had experienced episodes of breathing apnea and had been rushed to the hospital by her grandparents on several occasions. She would inexplicably stop breathing, collapse, turn blue, and then have to be revived. But to Gretchen, the most explosive information was this. The weak Nikki died, she had been terribly sick. When Robert brought Nikki to the Palestinian hospital, it wasn't the first time. He'd taken her there three days earlier because Nikki had a fever, was vomiting, coughing, congested, and had diarrhea. A doctor prescribed Nikki a powerful drug called Fenergan, a medication that now has an FDA black box warning for children under two. Because of the risk of respiratory failure and even death. The day after Nikki was given that medication, Robert asked her grandparents the Bowmans to watch her. He said he wanted to be with his girlfriend Teddy, who was in the hospital, recovering from that surgery. But Nikki was getting worse. The Bowmans took her to a doctor again. Her fever had spiked to 104.5 degrees. Nikki was diagnosed with a respiratory infection. And given more Fenergan, this time it was mixed with Codine, an Archatic. We're talking about a two-year-old child who is having breathing difficulties. Both of these drugs, Fenergan and Codine are associated with suppressing breathing and causing fatalities. Nikki's grandparents told us Nikki had always been healthy. We asked them about her long medical history. I reconciled this narrative out there that she was a sickly child. That's them trying to make people feel sorry for Robert. She had her little coals, you know? Obviously, we don't know anything. But what's in the record from her hospital visits was that she had sleep apnea. She had surgery on her ears with tubes in. Yeah, she did have that. She had gone to the hospital or the doctor more than 40 times in two years. That's what the records are. Other than her normal visits, I mean, we took her everywhere she went. I don't know. What we do know is that 24 hours after the Bowmans took Nikki to the doctor with a 104.5 degree fever, they called Robert telling him to pick her up. They live out in the country. She's been sick. But he, of course, he's going to do right by this child. He goes out there, they put crying Nikki in the car seat and he drives her home to his little rental house. By the next morning, Robert was driving his daughter back to the hospital, saying she'd fallen off the bed. Kelly Gurgannis, the nurse who first saw Nikki that morning, said the ER doctor immediately recognized Nikki. He was the same doctor who had prescribed fennered in three days earlier when Robert took her there. The doctor that assessed her, his words to me were, Kelly, what did I miss? Gretchen hired experts to examine Nikki's records. They concluded she'd been fighting pneumonia and the medication made everything worse. This child has been sick from day one. Isn't that meaningful? Yet at trial, all of her medical history was dismissed as minor, insignificant, not relevant to any of this. And that is completely contrary to contemporary medical understanding. It also wasn't accurate. Robert's jury never heard the extent of Nikki's long medical history. His lawyer, Steve Evans, had a different strategy. I almost cannot believe what I'm reading. As Gretchen studied the trial transcripts, she thought Evans sounded more like a prosecutor than a defense attorney. I mean, this trial was so fraught with due process problems. This guy never had a fighting chance. Evans never argued Robert was not guilty. Instead, he agreed with the prosecution, telling the jury, this is a shaken-baby case. We were confused about that. And when I spoke with Evans, he was too. You make your opening statements. You tell the jury, this is not a capital case. This is a shaken-baby case. No, I never told him it was a shaken-baby case. I told him it wasn't a shaken-baby case. This was an accidental drop case. I'm looking at the transcript from the opening and you say this is not a capital case and the evidence will not support it. This is, however, unfortunately, a shaken-baby case. This seems to have you saying that this was a shaken-baby case. I don't recall ever saying that it was a shaken-baby case. That was anathema to my soul, basically. I recall it. Because if you admit shaken-baby, you're admitting the, basically, mechanics of death. You're admitting that this wouldn't be an accident. This would not be something that was unintentional. It would be intentional. Evans had just acknowledged to me that his words may have sabotaged his own client. And then at the end of the trial, you're closing arguments. Yes, I came here in opening and presented to you that there is a responsibility in this case. Yes, this is a shaken-baby case, but no, this is not a murder case. Right. I don't believe it was a shaken-baby case. And I'm astonished by what you've related of the transcript. I deferred to the transcript, of course. He told us his goal was to persuade the jury that Robert didn't mean to kill Nikki. That even if it was a shaken-baby case, her death was an accident. But here's how you define a win in capital cases. You save their life. I still beat myself up as was there any other way. Because to me, the chance of him getting death was very high because of the nature of the case. Gretchen believed Steve Evans failed Robert. She was determined not to do the same thing. And she was about to uncover information about Robert that changed the way she saw him and the entire case. No one believed him. And that sickened me. I've always told him, I'm not walking away from this Robert. Hey guys, Willie Geist here. We're celebrating 10 years of Sunday today by hosting a very special Sunday sit-down live event. And our guest is one of the biggest stars on the planet, Ryan Reynolds. We're taking our conversation to the stage in front of an audience of you for one night only at City Winery in New York on April 7th and intimate in person evening. I promise you won't want to miss tickets are limited. So grab yours now at today.com. As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with here's the scoop. When you podcast from NBC News with me your host, Gasmian Vesugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalist. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful and it's informative bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, here's the scoop from NBC News. Listen daily on Apple Podcasts. We've been driving across Texas finding new details about Nikki's short life. But there was more to learn about Robert and who he was in the years leading up to his daughter's death. His younger brother Thomas and his wife Jennifer agreed to speak with me in Palestine where Thomas and Robert grew up. When people see his name and they read that he murdered his daughter, they're not reading the whole story. He's kind and gentle and he worries more about you than he worries about himself. When Robert finally started seeing Little Nikki, he had such a big smile on his face. Did he ever raise a hand on Nikki that you know of? No. Did he spank her? I've never seen him spanking her. Obviously it's just the idea that someone could kill a child is shocking and it's difficult to accept. If a person would kill a child, then why would they bring a child to the hospital? We have lots of questions. There's just a lot of things that people aren't taken into account in this story. One of the first people to ask questions after Robert's 2002 arrest was his court appointed defense investigator, the only one in town. Hey, Lesnar, we've got here. We stopped our very few provisions. His name is Rex Olson. He told us he'd known Robert for years. He used to deliver my newspaper right here. He'd drive by and put it in there and just say hello. Rex said he had had other clients accused of child abuse and Robert didn't act like any of them. He knew that child was injured and he got up to the hospital. I've had two or three of those dead cases. They never ever do that. So in your view, he acted like a concerned father would. What was your impression of Robert once he started working on the case? He had strange things. This guy could handle some numbers. What about me? He could calculate his money and save him in the stuff. He reminds me of that movie. Raymond? Yeah, there was a little taste of that with him. What Robinson? I don't see him as someone wanting to or really even to know to hurt someone. Gretchen also thought there was something a little different about Robert. She noticed it the first time she spoke with him. It was in 2016, right after she won him that stay of execution and a hearing. We had him on speaker phone and you know, handful of us were there to try to break the good news. And he sounded like he couldn't comprehend who we were, what had happened. But I also realized this man is so impaired. He had this very pronounced stammer and this sort of childlike way of speaking. And he was trying to explain something about a bag of chips. And it was like a light bulb for me. Gretchen had Robert evaluated by a neuropsychologist. He was diagnosed with autism. As I got to know Robert, as he's so much more than just a very impaired person. The best analogy I can get is that he's like forest scum. He has no guile. He does not lie. He takes everything very literally. She thought back to those witnesses who would describe Robert's demeanor as suspicious. He had a total flat effect, no emotion, no method. That's not normal. He's not responding to us in a typical way. There was just something off. How he hadn't called 911. How he made a ham sandwich while his daughter was fighting for her life. He has autism. He's in the state of shock. And one of the fundamental symptoms of autism is that when you're experiencing high stress, you actually shut down. Your ability to convey your emotions becomes even more crippled. Gretchen was curious if the witnesses who testified against Robert would have felt differently if they'd known about Robert's autism. Wondered if that would make any difference to some of these witnesses who had judged him really quite harshly as an unfeeling, uncaring person. Because they kept talking about he just sat there. He sat slumped in a chair. He didn't cry. He didn't make eye contact. All of that means something different if you understand his disability. She jumped in her car and went looking for Robert's girlfriend, Teddy Cox. His girlfriend at the time said he shook Nikki. His girlfriend's daughter and me said that Robert abused Nikki. It sounds pretty damning. His girlfriend had never told anybody that Robert was abusive. She admitted on the stands she'd been hospitalized for mental health breakdown, not a credible witness. When Gretchen found Teddy, they didn't talk long. Gretchen says Teddy seemed confused and wasn't making sense. Later, Gretchen's private investigator tracked down Teddy's sister, Patricia Conklin, the defense witness at Robert's trial. The investigator asked Patricia to record her sworn affidavit. Today I met the home of Patricia Conklin. Ms. Conklin is going to read a declaration that she had signed in a case that I've been working on, which is the Robert Roberson case. Go ahead, Patricia. I received my nursing degree at Trinity Valley College in 2003. I've been working as a nurse ever since. Patricia said that Robert was never anything but loving towards his daughter. But I saw Robert with Nikki many times. What I saw was a loving father. He was attentive, encouraged, thinking to play and was never dismissive or short with heart. I never saw him do anything heartful to her. Robert does not have a main bow in his body. He is a little slow, but I never saw him. We mean to anybody. And then Patricia made a jaw-dropping accusation. She said child protective services came to speak with her sister Teddy and her before the trial. Case workers with CBS came to me wanting me to report that I had seen Robert mistreating Nikki. Teddy and I talked about this. We were both threatened with having our kids taken away from us if we didn't get on board with accusing Robert. I'm a strong of course person in my sister and had better understanding of my rights. This pressure didn't work on me, but Teddy is different. And when she is scared she tends to tell people what she thinks they want to hear. We reached out to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to ask for comment. The agency declined. We were unable to track Teddy down. Gretchen was now convinced Robert was actually innocent. But there was one more person Gretchen wanted to speak with, an important one. You can love it, door knocking. One of the people I wanted to talk to was the former lead detective. Next time on the last appeal. We were able to create a Robert that was just a very moving experience. There's a death penalty supporter myself. There are just way too many questions, way too many concerns for us to say silent on this. I told her I've kind of been expecting you. So yeah, come on in. The last appeal is a production of Deadline and NBC News. It is written and produced by Dan Slepion, Liz Brown Curloff and Lynn Keller. Our field producers are Nick McElroy and Rachel Young. Our associate producer is Sam Springer. It's edited by Colin Dow and Greg Smith, Deb Brown and David Varga. From NBC News, audio sound mixing by Rob Buyers, Joe Plurd, Rick Kwan, with help from Rich Cutler. Head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Deadline.
