The death penalty is planned to be carried out on Friday night, Swedish time. It would be the first time a person sentenced to death for shaking a child to death is executed in the USA.
The 57-year-old convict was diagnosed with autism for the first time in 2018. When he arrived at the hospital with his daughter in 2002, the doctors became suspicious because the father seemingly did not show any emotions.
The man's lawyers claim that "new, overwhelming, medical and scientific" evidence shows that the chronically ill girl died of pneumonia. The doctors assumed child abuse without investigating the girl's medical history and misinterpreted the father's behavior, according to the lawyers.
A committee within the Texas state senate that questions the reasonableness of the death sentence has at the last minute called the man to testify on October 21, in an attempt to postpone the execution of the death sentence.
