Texas Tribune
Texas Medicaid vendor Deloitte subject of federal complaint
by By Rachana Pradhan and Samantha Liss, KFF Health News, The Texas Tribune – 2024-06-27 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Deloitte, a global consultancy earning billions in government contracts, is accused of widespread errors in Medicaid eligibility systems. Despite promoting itself as an industry leader, Deloitte's systems have issued incorrect notices, misrouted paperwork, and experienced significant downtime, impacting beneficiaries. Twenty-five states use Deloitte systems covering 53 million enrollees, but issues often require lengthy fixes. States like Tennessee, Kentucky, and Colorado reported various system failures, leading to lawsuits and severe health consequences for recipients. Documents reveal significant defects and manual errors. Deloitte maintains that operational decisions lie with state agencies, while advocates and union workers highlight the system's inefficiencies and errors.
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Deloitte, a global consultancy that reported revenue last year of $65 billion, pulls in billions of dollars from states and the federal government for supplying technology it says will modernize Medicaid.
The company promotes itself as the industry leader in building sophisticated and efficient systems for states that, among other things, screen who is eligible for Medicaid. However, a KFF Health News investigation of eligibility systems found widespread problems.
The systems have generated incorrect notices to Medicaid beneficiaries, sent their paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to findings in state audits, allegations and declarations in court documents, and interviews. It can take months to fix problems, according to court documents from a lawsuit in federal court in Tennessee, company documents, and state agencies. Meanwhile, America's poorest residents pay the price.
Deloitte dominates this important slice of government business: Twenty-five states have awarded it eligibility systems contracts — with 53 million Medicaid enrollees in those states as of April 1, 2023, when the unwinding of pandemic protections began, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Deloitte's contracts are worth at least $5 billion, according to a KFF Health News review of government contracts, in which Deloitte commits to design, develop, implement, or operate state systems.
State officials work hand in glove with Deloitte behind closed doors to translate policy choices into computer code that forms the backbone of eligibility systems. When things go wrong, it can be difficult to know who's at fault, according to attorneys, consumer advocates, and union workers. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to pull back the curtain.
Medicaid beneficiaries bear the brunt of system errors, said Steve Catanese, president of Service Employees International Union Local 668 in Pennsylvania. The union chapter represents roughly 19,000 employees — including government caseworkers who troubleshoot problems for recipients of safety-net benefits such as health coverage and cash assistance for food.
“Are you hungry? Wait. You sick? Wait,” he said. “Delays can kill people.”
KFF Health News interviewed Medicaid recipients, attorneys, and former caseworkers and government employees, and read thousands of pages from contracts, ongoing lawsuits, company materials, and state audits and documents that show problems with Deloitte-operated systems around the country — including in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas.
In an interview, Kenneth Smith, a Deloitte executive who leads its national human services division, said Medicaid eligibility technology is state-owned and agencies “direct their operation” and “make decisions about the policies and processes that they implement.”
“They're not Deloitte systems,” he said, noting Deloitte is one player among many who together administer Medicaid benefits.
Alleging “ongoing and nationwide” errors and “unfair and deceptive trade practices,” the National Health Law Program, a nonprofit that advocates for people with low incomes, urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Deloitte in a complaint filed in January.
“Systems built by Deloitte have generated numerous errors, resulting in inaccurate Medicaid eligibility determinations and loss of Medicaid coverage for eligible individuals in many states,” it argued. “The repetition of the same errors in Deloitte eligibility systems across Texas and other states and over time demonstrates that Deloitte has failed.”
FTC spokesperson Juliana Gruenwald Henderson confirmed receipt of the complaint but did not comment further.
Smith called the allegations “without merit.”
The system problems are especially concerning as states wade through millions of Medicaid eligibility checks to disenroll people who no longer qualify — a removal process that was paused for three years to protect people from losing insurance during the covid-19 public health emergency. In that time, nationwide Medicaid enrollment grew by more than 22 million, to roughly 87 million people. At least 22.8 million have been removed as of June 4 , according to a KFF analysis of government data.
Advocates worry many lost coverage despite being eligible. A KFF survey of adults disenrolled from Medicaid during the first year of the unwinding found that nearly 1 in 4 adults who were removed are now uninsured. Nearly half who were removed were able to reenroll, the survey showed, suggesting they should not have been dropped in the first place.
“If there is a technology challenge or reason why someone can't access health care that they're eligible for, and we're able to do something,” Smith said, “we work tirelessly to do so.”
Deloitte's contracts with states regularly cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the federal government pays the bulk of the cost.
“States become very dependent on the consultant for operating complex systems of all kinds” to do government business, said Michael Shaub, an accounting professor at Texas A&M University.
Georgia's contract with Deloitte to build and maintain its system for health and social service programs, inked in 2014, as of January 2023 was worth $528 million. This January, state officials wrote in an assessment obtained by KFF Health News that its eligibility system “lacks flexibility and adaptability, limiting Georgia's ability to serve its customers efficiently, improve the customer and worker experience across all programs, ensure data security, reduce benefit errors and fraud, and advance the state's goal of streamlining eligibility.”
Deloitte and the Georgia Department of Community Health declined to comment.
Deloitte is looking ahead with its “path to Medicaid in 2040,” anticipating sweeping changes that will expand its own business opportunity.
“State Medicaid leaders and policymakers are hungry to know what the future of health care holds,” the company said. “Deloitte brings the innovative tools, subject matter expertise, and time-tested experience to help states.”
Trouble in Tennessee
When Medicaid eligibility systems fail, beneficiaries suffer the consequences.
DiJuana Davis had chronic anemia that required iron infusions. In 2019, the 39-year-old Nashville resident scheduled separate surgeries to prevent pregnancy and to remove the lining of her uterus, which could alleviate blood loss and ease her anemia.
Then Davis, a mom of five, received a shock: Her family's Medicaid coverage had vanished. The hospital canceled the procedures, according to testimony in federal court in November.
DiJuana Davis is one of the plaintiffs in a Tennessee class-action lawsuit contesting the state's Medicaid eligibility process. She and her children lost their Medicaid coverage in 2019 after Tennessee launched a Deloitte-built eligibility system.
Credit:
William DeShazer for KFF Health News
Davis had kept her insurance for years without trouble. This time, Tennessee had just launched a new Deloitte-built eligibility system. It autofilled an incorrect address, where Davis had never lived, to send paperwork, an error that left her uninsured for nearly two months, according to an ongoing class-action lawsuit Davis and other beneficiaries filed against the state.
The lawsuit, which does not name Deloitte as a defendant, seeks to order Tennessee to restore coverage for those who wrongly lost it. Kimberly Hagan, Tennessee Medicaid's director of member services, said in a court filing defending the state's actions that many issues “reflect some unforeseen flaws or gaps” with the eligibility system and “some design errors.”
Hagan's legal declaration in 2020 gave a view of what went wrong: Davis lost coverage because of missteps by both Tennessee and Deloitte during what's known as the “conversion process,” when eligibility data was migrated to a new system.
Tennessee's Medicaid agency, known as “TennCare, along with its vendor, Deloitte, designed rules to govern the logic of conversion,” Hagan said in the legal declaration. She also cited a “manual, keying error by a worker” made in 2017.
Davis' family was “incorrectly merged with another family during conversion,” Hagan said.
Davis regained coverage, but before she could rebook the surgeries, she testified, she became pregnant and a serious complication emerged. In June 2020, Davis rushed to the hospital. A physician told her she had preeclampsia, a leading cause of maternal death. Labor was induced and her son was born prematurely.
“Preeclampsia can kill the mom. It can kill the baby. It can kill both of you,” she testified. “That's like a death sentence.”
Deloitte's Tennessee contract is worth $823 million. Deloitte declined to comment on Davis' case or the litigation.
DiJuana Davis shows a photo of her youngest son, Vrai Davis-Smith. Davis is a plaintiff in a Tennessee class-action lawsuit contesting the state's Medicaid eligibility process. She and her children lost their coverage in 2019 after Tennessee launched a Deloitte-built eligibility system.
Credit:
William DeShazer for KFF Health News
Speaking broadly, Smith said, “data conversion is incredibly challenging and difficult.”
Hagan called the problems one-time issues: “None of the Plaintiffs' cases reflect ongoing systemic problems that have not already been addressed or are scheduled to be addressed.”
States leverage Deloitte's technology as part of a larger push toward automation, legal aid attorneys and former caseworkers said.
“We all know that big computer projects are fraught,” said Gordon Bonnyman, co-founder of the nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center. “But a state that was concerned about inflicting collateral damage when they moved to a different automated system would have a lot of safeguards.”
TennCare spokesperson Amy Lawrence called its eligibility system “a transformative tool, streamlining processes and enhancing accessibility.”
When enrollees seek help at county offices, “you don't get to sit down across from a real human being,” Bonnyman said. “They point you to the kiosk and say, ‘Good luck with that.'”
A Backlog of 50,000 Cases
As part of the Affordable Care Act rollout about a decade ago, states invested in technological upgrades to determine who qualifies for public programs. It was a financial boon to Deloitte and such companies as Accenture and Optum, which landed government contracts to build those complex systems.
Problems soon emerged. In Kentucky, a Deloitte-built system that launched in February 2016 erroneously sent at least 25,000 automated letters telling people they would lose benefits, according to local news reports. State officials manually worked through a backlog of 50,000 cases caused by conflicting information from newly merged systems, the reports say.
“We know that the rollout of Benefind has caused frustration and concern for families and for field staff,” senior Deloitte executive Deborah Sills said during a March 2016 news conference alongside Gov. Matt Bevin and other senior officials after Kentucky was bombarded with complaints. Within two months, roughly 600 system defects were identified, found a report by the Kentucky state auditor.
The Deloitte Australia building in Parramatta, Sydney, Thursday on Aug. 10, 2023.
Credit:
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts via REUTERS
In Rhode Island, a botched rollout in September 2016 delayed tens of thousands of Social Security payments, The Providence Journal reported. Advocacy groups filed two class-action lawsuits, one related to Medicaid and the other to food stamp benefits. Both were settled, with Rhode Island officials denying wrongdoing. Neither named Deloitte as a defendant.
In a 2018 statement for a Statehouse hearing, Sills of Deloitte said, “We are very sorry for the impact that our system issues have had on your constituents, on state workers, and on service providers.” The state's top human services official resigned.
A 2017 audit by a top Rhode Island official prepared for Gov. Gina Raimondo found that Deloitte “delivered an IT system that is not functioning effectively” and had “significant defects.” “Widespread issues,” it said, “caused a significant deterioration in the quality of service provided by the State.”
“Deloitte held itself out as the leading vendor with significant experience in developing integrated eligibility systems for other states,” the audit read. “It appears that Deloitte did not sufficiently leverage this experience and expertise.” Deloitte declined to comment further about Rhode Island and Kentucky.
Deloitte invokes the phrase “no-touch” to describe its technology — approving benefits “without any tasks performed by the State workers,” it wrote in documents vying for an Arkansas contract.
In practice, enrollee advocates and former government caseworkers say, the systems frequently have errors and require manual workarounds.
As it considered hiring Deloitte, Arkansas officials asked the company about problems, particularly in Rhode Island.
In response, the company said in 2017, “We do not believe Deloitte Consulting LLP has had to implement a corrective action plan” for any eligibility system project in the previous five years.
Arkansas awarded Deloitte a $345 million contract effective in 2019 to develop its system.
“It had a lot of bugs,” said Bianca Garcia, a program eligibility specialist for the Arkansas Department of Human Services from August 2022 to October 2023.
Garcia said it could take weeks to fix errors in a family's details and Medicaid enrollees wouldn't receive the state's requests for information because of glitches. They would lose benefits because workers couldn't confirm eligibility, she added.
The enrollees “were doing their part, but the system just failed,” Garcia said.
Arkansas Department of Human Services spokesperson Gavin Lesnick said: “With any large-scale system implementation, there occasionally are issues that need to be addressed. We have worked alongside our vendor to minimize these issues and to correct any problems.”
Deloitte declined to comment.
‘Heated' Negotiations
In late 2020, Colorado officials were bracing for the inevitable unwinding of pandemic-era Medicaid protections.
Colorado was three years into what is now a $354.4 million contract with Deloitte to operate its eligibility system. A state-commissioned audit that September had uncovered widespread problems, and Kim Bimestefer, the state's top Medicaid official, was in “heated” negotiations with the company.
The audit found 67% of the system notices it sampled contained errors. Notices are federally required to safeguard against eligible people being disenrolled, said MaryBeth Musumeci, an associate teaching professor in public health at George Washington University.
“This is, for many people, what's keeping them from being uninsured,” Musumeci said.
DiJuana Davis and daughter Treasure Woodard at home in Nashville.
Credit:
William DeShazer for KFF Health News
The Colorado audit found many enrollee notices contained inaccurate response deadlines. One dated Dec. 19, 2019, requested a beneficiary return information by Sept. 27, 2011 — more than eight years earlier.
“We're in intense negotiations with our vendor because we can't turn around to the General Assembly and say, ‘Can I get money to fix this?'” Bimestefer told lawmakers during the 2020 legislative audit hearing. “I have to hold the vendor accountable for the tens of millions we've been paying them over the years, and we still have a system like this.”
She said officials had increased oversight of Deloitte. Also, dozens of initiatives were created to “improve eligibility accuracy and correspondence,” and the state renegotiated Deloitte's contract, said Marc Williams, a state Medicaid agency spokesperson. A contract amendment shows Deloitte credited Colorado with $5 million to offset payments for additional work.
But Deloitte's performance appeared to get worse. A 2023 state audit found problems in 90% of sampled enrollee notices. Some were violations of state Medicaid rules.
The audit blamed “flaws in system design” for populating notices with incorrect dates.
In September, Danae Davison received a confusing notice at her Arvada home stating that her daughter did not qualify for coverage.
Lydia, 11, who uses a wheelchair and is learning to communicate via a computer, has a seizure disorder that qualifies her for a Medicaid benefit for those with disabilities. The denial threatened access to nursing care, which enables her to live at home instead of in a facility. Nothing had changed with Lydia's condition, Davison said.
“She so clearly has the need,” Davison said. “This is a system problem.”
Davison appealed. In October, a judge ruled that Lydia qualified for coverage.
The notice generated by the Deloitte-operated system was deemed “legally insufficient” because it omitted the date Lydia's coverage would end. Her case highlights a known eligibility system problem: Beneficiary notices contain “non-compliant or inconsistent dates” and are “missing required elements and information,” according to the 2023 audit.
Deloitte declined to comment on Colorado. Speaking broadly, Smith said, “Incorrect information can come in a lot of forms.”
Last spring in Pennsylvania, Deloitte's eligibility role expanded to include the Children's Health Insurance Program and 126,000 enrollees.
Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services said an error occurred when converting to the state's eligibility system, maintained by Deloitte through a $541 million contract. DHS triaged the errors, but, for “a small window of time,” some children who still had coverage “were not able to use it.”
These issues affected 9,269 children last June and 2,422 in October, DHS said. A temporary solution was implemented in December and a permanent fix came through in April.
Catanese, the union representative, said it was another in a long history of problems. Among the most prevalent, he said: The system freezes for hours. When asked about that, Smith said “it's hyperbole.”
Instead of the efficiency that Deloitte touted, Catanese said, “the system constantly runs into errors that you have to duct tape and patchwork around.”
KFF Health News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam and correspondents Daniel Chang, Bram Sable-Smith, and Katheryn Houghton contributed to this report.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Disclosure: Accenture, Deloitte, Integrate and Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Texas to double state fund aimed at expanding power grid
by By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-01 17:05:54
SUMMARY: The state of Texas plans to double the Texas Energy Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion to expand the power grid as electricity demand is expected to nearly double by 2030. This follows a forecast by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which estimated the state's main grid would need to supply nearly twice its current power. The fund, approved by voters in November 2023, offers low-interest loans for new gas-fueled power plants. The state's grid has faced scrutiny since a 2021 winter storm caused extensive outages. Companies must apply for loans by July 27.
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The state of Texas plans to double a state fund aimed at expanding the power grid as demand for electricity is expected to nearly double over the next six years.
The state will look to boost the Texas Energy Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced on Monday. The fund was approved by voters in November 2023 to offer low-interest loans to incentivize development of new gas-fueled power plants.
The announcement comes soon after a new prediction by the state's main grid operator that said electricity needs will surge in the coming years. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas estimated that the state's main power grid would have to provide nearly double the amount of power it currently supplies by 2030.
The numbers in the new forecast, Abbott and Patrick said in a press release, “call for an immediate review of all policies concerning the grid.”
The state's grid came under intense public and legislative scrutiny after a winter storm in 2021 knocked out its operations, causing dayslong power outages across the state in freezing temperatures that left millions of Texans without lights or heat. Hundreds died.
The Texas Energy Fund set aside $5 billion to fund 3% interest loans to help construct new gas-fueled power plants that are not dependent on the weather and that could power 20,000 homes or more.
The fund was also designed to pay out bonuses to companies that connect new gas-fueled plants to the main grid by June 2029, and to offer grants for modernizing, weatherizing and managing vegetation growth around electricity infrastructure in Texas outside the main electricity market, which meets around 90% of the state's power needs.
The state received notices of intent to apply for $39 billion in loans — almost eight times more than what was initially set aside, Abbott and Patrick said. They added that the average plant will take three to four years to complete, and new transmission lines will take three to six years to complete.
Companies have until July 27 to apply for a loan.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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Commanding officer confirms Troy Nehls has two Bronze Stars
by By Isaac Yu, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-01 13:02:57
SUMMARY: The Texas Tribune reports that the military record of Rep. Troy Nehls has come under scrutiny. A CBS investigation revealed discrepancies in Nehls' service decorations, including claims of a second Bronze Star and a Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB), which the Pentagon has not corroborated. Nehls' former commanding officer, Jason Burke, affirmed awarding him a second Bronze Star in 2008. Despite the Pentagon's records indicating only one Bronze Star and no CIB, Nehls insists on social media that he earned both awards. Nehls, facing criticism, has stopped wearing the CIB, which was revoked in 2023 due to service in a non-combat role.
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WASHINGTON — The commanding officer of a 2008 tour in Afghanistan that included then-U.S. Army Major Troy Nehls told The Texas Tribune that he recalls awarding the now-congressman his second Bronze Star award.
That award — which recognizes service members who show heroism in the field — has been called into question after a CBS investigation reported Nehls had been touting military decorations that did not match his service record provided by the Pentagon. In campaign ads and in his House biography, Nehls, R-Richmond, has posted pictures wearing an Army uniform and two Bronze Star medals. He has also worn the Combat Infantryman Badge lapel pin, awarded to soldiers for service in combat.
The investigation found that the Pentagon reported Nehls received only one Bronze star and that the Combat Infantryman Badge was awarded in error and rescinded in 2023. Nehls, who has been publicly criticized by members of his own party amid the claims of stolen valor, said on social media that he did have two Bronze Stars. But he has since stopped wearing the CIB.
But Jason Burke, the Navy captain who led the 130-person joint task force Nehls served on during his tour, recalled awarding the medal to Nehls. Nehls received the medal at a ceremony with several other officers in the fall of 2008, shortly before Nehls finished his tour and returned to Texas, Burke told the Tribune.
“You're getting that award if you've done a good job and met the criteria,” said the now-retired Burke, who is listed on the award certificate as Nehls' commanding officer. “He earned it, and received it.”
Nehls, who represents a swath of Houston suburbs, served as Burke's second-in-command under a joint effort called Task Force Currahee. Their unit, which included both Army and Navy officers, worked on provincial reconstruction, building roads, clinics and schools in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni Province. Burke said the team's convoys regularly came under Taliban ambushes and guerrilla attacks.
The Bronze Star award must be recommended by a commander, and any service member in any branch of the military working an operation involving a conflict with an opposing force is eligible. The CIB, by contrast, is only given to those in combat roles.
It was relatively standard during the U.S.'s war on terrorism, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, for officers of certain ranks to receive a some kind of award upon completing a tour, often a Bronze Star. Nehls' first star was awarded for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004, where he trained 13 staff members of an Iraqi government office to perform financial assessments, according to the certificate.
A spokesperson for Nehls declined to comment on this story, pointing to a post on X Nehls made last month defending his record and posting photos of the certificates of his two Bronze Stars, and his copy of the underlying nomination forms. Burke's sign-off can be seen on the 2008 documentation, known as a Form 638, along with signatures from two higher-level officials.
CBS reported the Pentagon would conduct another review of Nehls' record. The most recent summary of his service and awards, provided to the Tribune by a Pentagon spokesperson on Friday, lists only one Bronze Star and no CIB.
The systems for keeping records for military awards can be difficult to navigate. A soldier often becomes responsible for making sure awards paperwork is turned over to a personnel officer.
That means documentation for awards sometimes slips through the cracks, according to retired Army sergeant Anthony Anderson, who has investigated numerous instances of stolen valor.
“I wouldn't say it's common, but it does happen,” Anderson said.
Anderson said he had previously spoken with Nehls' chief of staff, encouraging them to submit documentation of the second Bronze Star to the Pentagon to be added to Nehls record.
He said he would be surprised if an officer in Nehls' position hadn't received a Bronze Star.
Nehls' military record has become a thorn for him in recent months. He announced that he would stop wearing the Combat Infantryman Badge last week in response to reports that the badge had been revoked in 2023.
Nehls was found to be ineligible for that badge because he had served in Afghanistan in a civil role, not as a combatant infantryman. Nehls did serve as an infantryman during his time with the Wisconsin National Guard in the 1990s, completing a tour in Bosnia.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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Robert Robertson execution day set in Texas shaken baby case
by By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-01 11:33:10
SUMMARY: A Texas court has scheduled Robert Roberson's execution for October 17. Roberson, sentenced to death in 2003 for his 2-year-old daughter's death, has consistently challenged the conviction, claiming it was based on questionable science. Despite halting his execution in 2016 due to doubts about shaken baby syndrome, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his death sentence in 2023. Roberson's attorneys argue new evidence shows his daughter died of natural causes, not head trauma, and question the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis. The execution date triggers deadlines for last-minute legal and clemency filings.
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A Texas court on Monday set an execution date for Robert Roberson, who was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter but has consistently challenged the conviction on the claim that it was based on questionable science.
Roberson has maintained his innocence while being held on death row for more than 20 years. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals previously halted his execution in 2016. But in 2023, the state's highest criminal court decided that doubt over the cause of his daughter's death was not enough to overturn his death sentence.
His new execution date is set for Oct. 17.
Roberson's attorneys objected to the scheduling of an execution after Anderson County prosecutors requested on June 17 that a date be set. His attorneys said they have new evidence to bolster their case and that they planned to file a new request to overturn his conviction.
As a result, his attorneys argued, setting an execution date would be “premature and unjust.”
Roberson was convicted of killing his sickly 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after he rushed her blue, limp body to the hospital. He said that Nikki fell from the bed while they were sleeping in their home in the East Texas town of Palestine and that he awoke to find her unresponsive. But doctors and nurses, who were unable to revive her, did not believe such a low fall could have caused the fatal injuries and suspected child abuse.
At trial, doctors testified that Nikki's death was consistent with shaken baby syndrome — in which an infant is severely injured from being shaken violently back and forth — and a jury convicted Roberson.
The Court of Criminal Appeals in 2016 stopped his execution and sent the case back to the trial court after the scientific consensus around shaken baby syndrome diagnoses came into question. Many doctors believe the condition is used as an explanation for an infant's death too often in criminal cases, without considering other possibilities and the baby's medical history.
The Court of Criminal Appeals' decision was largely a product of a 2013 state law, dubbed the “junk science law,” which allows Texas courts to overturn a conviction when the scientific evidence used to reach a verdict has since changed or been discredited. Lawmakers, in passing the law, highlighted cases of infant trauma that used faulty science to convict defendants as examples of the cases the legislation was meant to target.
Roberson's attorneys, in their opposition to setting an execution date, cited “overwhelming new evidence” that Nikki died of “natural and accidental causes” — not due to head trauma.
They wrote that Nikki had “severe, undiagnosed” pneumonia that caused her to stop breathing, collapse and turn blue before she was discovered. Then, instead of identifying her pneumonia, doctors prescribed her Phenergan and codeine, drugs that are no longer given to children her age, further suppressing her breathing, they argued.
“It is irrefutable that Nikki's medical records show that she was severely ill during the last week of her life,” Roberson's attorneys wrote, noting that in the week before her death, Roberson had taken Nikki to the emergency room because she had been coughing, wheezing and struggling with diarrhea for several days, and to her pediatrician's office, where her temperature came in at 104.5 degrees.
“There was a tragic, untimely death of a sick child whose impaired, impoverished father did not know how to explain what has confounded the medical community for decades,” Roberson's attorneys wrote.
They have also argued that new scientific evidence suggests that it is impossible to shake a toddler to death without causing serious neck injuries, which Nikki did not have.
And they cited developments in a similar case in Dallas County, in which a man was convicted of injuring a child. His conviction was based in part on now partially recanted testimony from a child abuse expert who provided similar testimony on shaken baby syndrome in Roberson's case. Prosecutors in Dallas County have said the defendant should get a new trial.
In 2023, when the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Roberson a new trial, prosecutors argued that the evidence supporting Roberson's conviction was still “clear and convincing” and that the science around shaken baby syndrome had not changed as much as his defense attorneys claimed. Witnesses also testified at trial that Roberson had a bad temper and would shake and spank Nikki when she would not stop crying.
The scheduling of Roberson's execution triggers a series of deadlines for any last filings in state and federal court to seek relief and begin a request for clemency.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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