With his execution looming last Thursday, the 57-year-old Texas death row inmate watched as his attorneys’ legal arguments were rejected in the courts and his pleas for clemency disregarded, as the state parole board declined to recommend he receive a lesser sentence or reprieve.

Robert Roberson, who had been set to be the first person in the U.S. to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby