CNN
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Robert Roberson, a death row inmate from Texas, sat praying Thursday evening in a cell just steps away from the execution chamber where he would die by lethal injection for the “shaken baby” death of his toddler.

As he prayed, the state and its advocates fought over his fate in a remarkable exchange of eleventh-hour legal maneuvering.

Roberson’s life was ultimately spared for now by the Texas Supreme Court, which issued a temporary stay of his execution shortly before his death sentence was set to expire at midnight.

A new date must now be set for Roberson’s execution, buying valuable time for his attorneys and a bipartisan group of Texas House members who believe he was wrongly convicted of murder in the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, which was attributed to shaken baby syndrome.

Roberson was shocked when a group of Texas officials informed him of the stay Thursday evening, and he began praising God and “claiming his innocence,” just as he has done for the past two decades, according to Amanda Hernandez, a spokesperson from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The dramatic twist began Wednesday when, in an unusual last-ditch effort to delay Roberson’s death, the bipartisan Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena calling for him to testify before the panel next week because it questions the legality of reconsiders his case.

The commission’s action provided new hope for Roberson’s attorneys as all other options to stop the execution failed. Within days, his legal team lost multiple appeals in state courts, the Texas pardon board rejected his request for clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.

“The enormous team fighting for Robert Roberson – people from across Texas, around the country and around the world – are thrilled tonight that a contingent of brave, bipartisan Texas lawmakers have chosen to dig deep into the facts of Robert’s case who have not yet court had considered and realized his life was worth fighting for,” Roberson’s attorney Gretchen Sween said Thursday evening.

Just over 90 minutes before Roberson’s execution was to begin, the House committee was able to enforce a temporary restraining order against the state, halting the execution. The victory was short-lived, however, as a divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the order.

Following the appeals court’s decision, the House of Representatives committee asked the Texas Supreme Court to issue an injunction against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Correctional Institutions Division. Although the Supreme Court quickly issued a temporary stay to halt the execution, the request for an injunction is still pending.

“For more than two decades, Roberson has spent 23.5 hours every day in solitary confinement in a cell no larger than the closets of most Texans, longing and striving to be heard,” said committee members Rep. Joe Moody and Rep. Jeff Leach in a joint statement after the stay. “And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not.”

As the series of legal challenges played out, Roberson sat in a cell at the Huntsville unit where his execution would take place. According to his sister-in-law, Jennifer Roberson, he spent time in prayer and also spoke several times with his wife and other family members.

“When we were talking to Robert earlier, I thought to myself, ‘You have to be strong, you have to comfort him.’ And that’s the exact opposite of what happened,” she said. “I was a nervous wreck and he comforted me by telling me to be obedient to God, stay strong, keep the faith, keep the hope.”

Roberson’s family is feeling “great” after the stay, Jennifer Roberson said. “It took almost 22 years for Texas to step up and do the right thing.”

Among those desperately awaiting news in the case was Brian Wharton, the former Palestine, Texas, police detective who led the investigation into Nikki’s death. Wharton has since said the investigation was too narrowly focused and has joined the fight to save Roberson.

“Finally they came tonight and told us he was getting a reprieve, and his wife started crying, and everyone else just took a deep breath. Because we all know he’s innocent,” Wharton told CNN on Thursday. “We have been fighting this battle for some time and are trying to get a fair hearing.”

Roberson will testify before the House committee on Monday, or possibly sooner if the court orders it.

“We look forward to welcoming Robert to the Texas Capitol, and along with 31 million Texans, finally giving him – and the truth – a chance to be heard,” Reps. Moody and Leach said in their statement.

CNN has reached out to the offices of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the court’s decision.

Supporters of Roberson insist that the diagnosis that his daughter died of shaken baby syndrome is inaccurate and has been discredited.

The Texas House committee voted to subpoena Roberson as it considers implementing a law commonly referred to as the “junk science writ” — which opened a path for people to challenge their convictions if new scientific evidence has emerged.

Lawmakers said medical evidence presented at Roberson’s 2003 trial “contradicts modern scientific principles.”

While child abuse pediatricians continue to insist on the validity of the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis, Roberson’s attorneys say there is ample evidence that his daughter, Nikki Curtis, did not die from child abuse.

At the time of her death, she had double pneumonia that had progressed to sepsis, and was prescribed two medications now considered unsuitable for children and which would have further impaired her ability to breathe, they claim, citing medical experts.

In addition, she had fallen out of bed and was particularly vulnerable because of her ailing condition, Roberson’s attorneys say.

Other factors also contributed to his conviction, they argue. Doctors who treated Nikki “suspected” abuse based on her symptoms and general mindset at the time of her death, without examining her recent medical history, the inmate’s attorneys allege. His behavior in the emergency room – seen as indifferent by doctors, nurses and police, who believed it as a sign of his guilt – was actually a manifestation of autism spectrum disorder, which his lawyers say went undiagnosed until 2018.

Roberson’s attorneys do not dispute that babies can die from being shaken. But they argue that milder explanations, including illness, can mimic the symptoms of tremors, and those alternative explanations must be ruled out before a medical expert testifies with certainty that the cause of death was abuse.

Shaken Baby Syndrome is accepted as a valid diagnosis by the American Academy of Pediatrics and is supported by child abuse pediatricians who spoke to CNN. The condition, first described in the mid-1970s, has been considered for the past 15 years to be a form of ‘abuse head trauma’ – a broader term used to describe actions other than shaking, such as a blow to the head of a child.

Criminal defense attorneys have also oversimplified the way doctors diagnose abuse from head trauma, pediatricians say, noting that many factors are taken into account to determine this.

“The conclusion is simply that (Nikki) was the victim of violent head trauma. Unequivocal,” said Dr. Sandeep Narang, a pediatrician and child abuse attorney, told CNN after saying he was asked by a supporter of Roberson’s defense to review witness statements in the case.

Still, the diagnosis has been the focus of debates in courtrooms across the country. Courts in at least 17 states and the U.S. military have exonerated 32 people convicted in shaken baby syndrome cases since 1992, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Pediatricians in the field of child abuse, such as Dr. Antoinette Laskey, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, dispute these statistics. She pointed to a 2021 article that found that only 3% of all convictions in shaken baby syndrome cases were overturned between 2008 and 2018, and only 1% of those were overturned due to medical evidence.