Does a conviction based on a discredited scientific theory violate due process?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Capital Case — No Execution Date Petitioner Robert Roberson is an innocent man on Texas’s death row. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced in 2003 for purportedly causing the death of his twoyear-old daughter Nikki, a chronically ill child with a 104.5-degree fever soon before her collapse on January 31, 2002. Robert, who had an 8th-grade education and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, could not explain Nikki’s condition to the satisfaction of hospital staff. The hypothesis used to convict him reflected the consensus in the medical community at the time: that, absent something like a massive car accident, a child in Nikki’s condition must have been violently shaken and, possibly, struck against a blunt surface. “Shaking” (thus abuse) was thought to explain why a child, with no significant external signs of trauma, would have the following “triad” of internal symptoms: bleeding inside the head under the dura membrane, brain swelling, and retinal hemorrhages (bleeding in the eyes). The medical consensus was that naturally occurring illnesses or short falls with an impact to the head could not cause this triad. The medical consensus also presumed that whoever had been caring for the child when she lost consciousness must have been the culprit because the violent shaking would have caused immediate brain damage. Caregivers, like Robert, who denied doing anything to hurt the child, were perceived as callous liars. These premises were collectively known as “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS). Experts in the habeas proceeding below explained that, in the decades since trial, scientific inquiry has: exposed the lack of empirical evidence supporting SBS, challenged the circular nature of its premises, and emphasized the need for a “differential diagnosis” that looks at the child’s medical history and rules out the numerous conditions now known to cause the same triad. The State did not rebut Petitioner’s new evidence of Nikki’s severe, undiagnosed pneumonia and of the medications in her system, phenomena that can cause fatal hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), which in turn causes the triad previously thought to prove abuse. Nor could the State deny that the current scientific consensus recognizes that short falls with head impact can also cause the triad, a concept ridiculed at trial. The Questions Presented are: (1) Does a conviction, based on a causation theory presented to a jury as scientific fact and used to establish that a homicide occurred, violate due process when later medical and scientific understanding undermines all core premises previously associated with that causation theory? (2) Are a habeas applicant’s due process rights violated when (i) the habeas court ignores substantial, unrebutted new evidence that no homicide occurred and relies i instead on the outdated, unscientific evidence presented at trial as the basis for recommending that habeas relief be denied and (ii) the reviewing court uncritically adopts the habeas court’s findings and conclusions without any analysis whatsoever? ii