The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday halted the execution of a man who would have been the first person in the United States put to death over a shaken baby syndrome diagnosis.

Robert Leslie Roberson III was scheduled to be executed on Oct. 16 for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki. The state’s highest criminal court granted a stay while a trial court examines whether evolving scientific evidence warrants relief under a Texas law allowing challenges to convictions based on discredited science.

Roberson was convicted in 2003 after doctors diagnosed shaken baby syndrome based on brain swelling, bleeding and retinal hemorrhaging. Medical records later revealed Nikki had severe pneumonia and had fallen from her bed—factors that could have caused the symptoms.

In this week’s decision, the court cited Ex parte Roark, a recent case ordering a new trial for a prisoner convicted of shaken baby syndrome in 1997, finding scientific understanding had evolved significantly.

Advocates say Roberson, who has autism spectrum disorder diagnosed after his conviction, was disadvantaged when hospital staff and investigators misinterpreted his flat affect as indicating guilt.

The stay remains in effect pending the trial court’s review.

This is the second execution stay for Roberson. His execution was also halted last year after Texas lawmakers subpoenaed him in a last-minute intervention. The appeals court previously stayed his execution in 2016 under the same junk science law, but a trial court denied relief and the appeals court upheld that decision in 2023.