Unless, in just the next few hours, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott decides to listen to his fellow Republicans in the statehouse who are begging him, with good reason, to stay the execution of Robert Roberson, yet another innocent man will be put to death before nightfall, and why?

The U.S. Supreme Court could also stop this wrongfully convicted man, who has autism, from being murdered by our rampaging legal system — I see no other way to describe what keeps happening — at 6 p.m. on Thursday, but this seems even less likely.

As I’ve written before, Roberson was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter Nikki in 2003, based on the junk science of what we used to call “shaken baby syndrome.” In a July interview, the lead police investigator on the case, Brian Wharton, told me that he’s not only come to believe that Roberson is innocent, but that Wharton ultimately left law enforcement and became a minister because of his moral misgivings about this and another case.

Texas lawmakers did something extraordinary a decade ago. They passed a “junk science law” that allows Texas courts to overturn convictions based on discredited scientific evidence. Shaken baby cases were among those that had convinced lawmakers to pass that law. This is why both Republicans and Democrats in Austin want the 30-day stay of execution, because they want to see their law applied by the court as intended.

At a hearing lawmakers just held on this case, they subpoenaed Robert Roberson himself to testify next Monday.

Those who have spoken out against putting Roberson to death include John Grisham, Dr. Phil, who interviewed Roberson in prison, Republican donors in Texas and advocates for those with autism. And if facts don’t matter in matters of life and death, then when?

I have written about the shaky science behind “shaken baby” before. And will again, because innocent parents and caregivers here in Kansas City and across the country continue to be prosecuted for deaths that were the result of natural causes, as Roberson’s daughter’s was. Yes, even as reports of all-too-real child abuse are still too often ignored until it’s too late. “We went from never recognizing child abuse to ‘child abuse is everywhere,’” one of Roberson’s attorneys, Gretchen Sween, told me months ago.

When Roberson rushed his daughter to the hospital after she had collapsed, and was limp and blue, he said she’d fallen off the bed where they’d been asleep in their home in Palestine, in East Texas. But she’d also been quite sick, with undiagnosed pneumonia, and earlier that week, he’d already taken her both to the pediatrician with a high temperature and to the ER.

There were no signs of violence in Roberson’s home, Wharton told me, and Nikki didn’t look like she’d been beaten. But “at the hospital, it seemed like guilt,” in part because Roberson, who has autism, didn’t show the expected outpouring of emotion. “When a parent doesn’t behave ‘correctly’…,’ Wharton said. Then, after a CAT scan, “the hospital came with all the ‘shaken baby’ stuff, so all of the focus was on him. At the hospital, it was all verbal that this was just what this is, and we didn’t have any expertise to question any of that.”

Wharton did have some doubts about some of what they were told: “My initial concern was in the ER, there was a sexual assault nurse who said she’d seen ‘anal tearing.’ I didn’t see anything I would classify as unusual. Nothing else in the investigation supported sexual assault,” either. “Then a snitch comes forward and says (Roberson) confessed to the sexual assault. When (prosecutors) told me the name of the snitch I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ He was a known quantity and not someone you’d depend on for anything.”

Still, “the minuscule evidence of sexual assault did get before the jury. It was just jury manipulation, I’m sorry.” Then, right before the jury was given its instructions, the prosecutor withdrew the sexual assault charge. “I thought it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, but I thought a decent appellate attorney would have it overturned.” Obviously, that never happened.

Experts have since found and testified that Nikki actually died of severe pneumonia. And we know now that many medical conditions, including pneumonia, can cause the brain bleeding, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes that still are often seen, incorrectly, as proof positive of child abuse. We also now know that it is impossible to shake a toddler to death without causing serious neck injuries, which Nikki did not have.

How can this not matter, you ask? Because we have a system that values finality over truth. And because we have too many governors, like Missouri’s own Mike Parson, who could intervene to save the lives of those who are likely innocent, like Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, but for whatever reason do not.

Parson could also have spared Brian Dorsey, who was so beloved by prison personnel that they begged the governor to commute his sentence to life behind bars. But that didn’t happen, either. Instead, Missouri put both men to death this year, along with a third man, David Hosier.

Courts in Texas keep blocking Roberson on procedural grounds but have never looked at how “shaken baby” science has evolved, which again is what Texas lawmakers intended when they passed the “junk science” law way back in 2013.

If the law still matters, then for a few more hours, I’m going to hold onto the hope that Greg Abbott will allow it to be followed. If mercy still exists, for someone who should never even have required it, the governor could show that, too.