Texas Appeals Court Dismisses Man’s Shaken Baby Conviction

A gavel in a file photograph. Demetrius Freeman/Pool/Getty Images

A Texas man convicted of shaking his baby so violently that it caused serious injuries saw his conviction thrown out on Oct. 9.

Andrew Wayne Roark would not have been convicted if developments in science related to shaken baby syndrome were presented at his trial, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said.

“The admissible scientific testimony at trial today would likely yield an acquittal,” Judge Barbara Hervey wrote for the majority.

Roark, now 47, was convicted in 2000 after prosecutors said that he shook his 1-year-old daughter so violently that it caused brain damage. Defense lawyers said the brain injury was caused by an injury suffered weeks earlier and that the old injury rebled when the girl hit her head in the bathtub or rolled off her bed.

New evidence entered in 2014, 2019, and 2023 support Roark’s position, including that short-distance falls, such as hitting the head in a bathtub, can cause serious injury or death, according to a habeas court. The court also concluded that there is no scientific evidence to back the state’s position that shaking alone could cause the brain damage suffered by the girl.

Convicts in Texas can ask for their convictions to be thrown out by presenting scientific evidence either not available during their trial or that contradicts the evidence relied on by prosecutors at the trial.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also noted that some of the experts who testified as witnesses for the state against Roark have since shifted their positions. One doctor who said during the trial that the girl’s injuries were absolutely consistent with shaken baby syndrome said during another trial, after reading an animal study, that shaking alone was not sufficient. Another doctor said the injuries could not have been caused by the girl, but her successor said at a later trial that a simple fall could cause subdural hematoma or brain bleeding.

“The science today supports the proposition that [the girl’s] injury could have been sustained by a short-distance fall, or occurred spontaneously, due to the acute-on-chronic subdural hematoma,” Hervey said.

Most judges joined with Hervey.

Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, in a dissent, highlighted how evidence that has not been challenged, including how new blood was found in different places in the girl’s brain than old blood, could easily lead to a jury convicting Roark.

“Even with the new evidence, the jury would have been confronted with the fact that the child went from appearing normal to being near death within just a few hours during which time [the] applicant was the sole caregiver,” she wrote, adding later that Roark “has failed to meet his burden to show by a preponderance of the evidence that a jury would not have convicted him.”

The ruling remands the case back to the trial court for a new trial.

A lawyer representing Roark and a spokeswoman for Dallas County prosecutors did not return requests for comment.

A number of exonerations in cases involving shaken baby syndrome have occurred in recent years, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, including an Ohio man sentenced for murder in 2003 seeing his conviction tossed in 2024.

Texas is preparing to execute another man, Robert Roberson, over causing the death of his 2-year-old daughter. Lawyers for Robertson have asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the execution, which is currently slated to take place on Oct. 17.

“Because there is no meaningful distinction between Mr. Roark’s and Mr. Roberson’s cases in terms of the State’s cause-of-injury theory, and because Mr. Roberson has since adduced overwhelming evidence of the natural and accidental causes for the tragic death of his very ill daughter, he too should, quite logically, be awarded a new trial,” Gretchen Sims Sween, a lawyer representing Roark, said in a statement.