“Actually innocent”: Judge recommends overturning death row inmate Melissa Lucio’s conviction, sending case to Texas high court

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The trial judge who presided over death row inmate Melissa Lucio’s capital murder case found last month that she is innocent of her daughter’s death and recommended that her sentence and conviction be overturned, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

Judge Arturo Nelson of Cameron County found on Oct. 16 that there was clear and convincing evidence that the death of Lucio’s 2-year-old daughter, Mariah, was caused by an accidental fall on some stairs, and that prosecutors had relied on false testimony and flawed scientific evidence to convince a jury of her guilt.

Lucio, he found, “is actually innocent; she did not kill her daughter.”

The case now goes to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which must decide whether to accept Nelson’s recommendation to overturn Lucio’s conviction and death sentence.

“This is the best news we could get going into the holidays,” John and Michelle Lucio, Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, said in a statement. “We pray our mother will be home soon.”

Lucio was convicted of capital murder in 2008. But doubts surrounding the cause of Mariah’s death and the fairness of Lucio’s conviction reached a fever pitch in 2022, as Lucio’s supporters — including most of the Texas Legislature — argued that there were too many questions about her trial to carry out her execution.

When paramedics arrived at the family’s Brownsville home in 2007, they found Mariah “turning purple and unresponsive,” with bruising throughout her body.

Lucio repeatedly denied hurting her daughter. She described how Mariah had fallen on the stairs two days before her death, and though she appeared fine at first, her condition quickly deteriorated, and she became congested and lethargic.

Then, after roughly five hours of police interrogation the night Mariah died, Lucio told officers that she had slapped, pinched and bitten Mariah, though she never admitted causing her daughter’s death.

The state’s case relied primarily on that “confession” at trial, while the judge barred testimony from experts that Lucio, a long-time victim of domestic and sexual abuse, had sought to explain why she would make a false confession while under pressure from male authority figures.

Prosecutors also centered a medical examiner’s testimony that Mariah’s injuries “could only have been caused by intentional physical abuse.”

The Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Lucio’s execution in 2022, ordering the trial court to consider whether Lucio was actually innocent, and whether the state had presented false testimony at trial and hid evidence from the defense.

In April, Nelson agreed that the prosecution had suppressed evidence that supported Lucio’s innocence during trial and recommended that her conviction be overturned.

In interviews with police after Mariah’s death, five of Lucio’s children had denied that their mother was physically abusive and affirmed that Mariah had fallen on the stairs. At least one of her children said they saw Mariah fall.

Prosecutors did not share those interviews with the defense during the trial, which Lucio’s attorneys and Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz — who was not involved in the prosecution — said in 2022 was a violation of her constitutional rights.

In June, the Court of Criminal Appeals asked Nelson to also make recommendations on three outstanding arguments Lucio had presented in winning a stay, related to her actual innocence, false testimony presented by the state and new scientific evidence.

Last month, Nelson recommended in her favor on all three claims.

The judge found “clear and convincing evidence” that Mariah’s fatal head injury was caused by a fall on the stairs two days before she died, and that even if Lucio’s “confession” were true, the actions she admitted to would not have caused her daughter’s death.

“No rational juror could have convicted Applicant of killing her daughter after hearing all of the evidence from her original trial alongside all of the new evidence she has presented,” he wrote.

Nelson also agreed that scientific evidence not presented at trial would have undermined the state’s case.

He found that there was persuasive evidence that Lucio was someone highly susceptible to making a false confession during an intense interrogation, and that injuries on Mariah’s body were likely linked to her fall and not to biting or abuse as the state had contended.

And the judge found that the state had used “false and misleading evidence regarding two central factual issues contested at trial.”

At trial, the state’s medical examiner testified that it was impossible for Mariah’s injuries and death to have resulted from an accidental fall.

But Nelson agreed that Mariah’s autopsy, eyewitness accounts of her fall and her subsequent deterioration provided credible evidence that she died of head trauma from an accidental fall on the stairs — not from abuse.

A Texas Ranger also testified that he could determine Lucio’s guilt based on her demeanor and body language in the interrogation room. The judge found that the scientific consensus said that no one can determine if a person is telling the truth based on their demeanor.

Those core pieces of false testimony, Nelson found, “affected the jury’s verdict” and violated Lucio’s due process rights.

“Melissa Lucio lived every parent’s nightmare when she lost her daughter after a tragic accident,” Vanessa Potkin, Lucio’s attorney and director of special litigation at the Innocence Project, said in a statement. “After 16 years on death row, it’s time for the nightmare to end.”