The death penalty was planned to be carried out on Friday night, Swedish time.
But at the last minute, the execution was postponed, after a committee within the Texas state senate questioned the reasonableness of the death sentence. The Texas Supreme Court then upheld the request, after the state appeals court had earlier in the day denied it.
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 suspected something 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.
So far, no one has been executed for shaking a child to death in the USA.
