The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday rejected a lower court’s finding that death row inmate Melissa Lucio is innocent of the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter.
Lucio has spent 18 years on death row after being convicted of killing her daughter, Mariah Alvarez. But questions about Lucio’s possible innocence have lingered for years, stemming from questions of whether Mariah’s fatal head trauma was caused by abuse or an accidental fall down the stairs as her mother and others described.
The appeals court stayed Lucio’s execution in 2022 to allow a lower court to review claims that new scientific evidence would prove her innocence and that suppressed evidence had contributed to her conviction.
In separate 2024 rulings, District Judge Arturo Nelson — who had presided over Lucio’s original trial — recommended that the state’s highest criminal court overturn her sentence and declare Lucio “actually innocent.”
Instead, the Court of Criminal Appeals cast doubt on her claims and said the lower-court rulings relied too heavily on Lucio’s interpretation of events and not the prosecution’s case.
“We decline to adopt any of the habeas court’s findings and conclusions, which exclusively reflect Applicant’s interpretation of the evidence and are often unsupported,” the court said in an unsigned opinion from which four of the nine judges dissented.
Three judges — David Newell, Lee Finley and David Schenck — filed dissenting opinions and a fourth, Scott Walker, dissented from the ruling without filing an opinion.
Newell noted that prosecutors conceded during Lucio’s appeal that they had withheld material evidence during her trial, and admonished the court for ignoring their concession.
“The facts in this case are devastating. This makes the State’s failure to disclose material exculpatory evidence all the more tragic,” Newell wrote.
Lucio’s lawyer, Vanessa Potkin, said she will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Between Judge Nelson’s detailed findings of innocence, and District Attorney [Luis] Saenz’s concession of error, we are confident that the courts will clear Melissa Lucio and allow her to return home to her children and grandchildren,” Potkin said.
If exonerated, Lucio would be the first woman declared innocent from Texas death row, joining 18 exonerated men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
This is a developing story.
