Texas Court Rejects Innocence Finding for Death Row Inmate Melissa Lucio
Texas' highest criminal appeals court has rejected a lower court's finding that Melissa Lucio is actually innocent in her daughter's 2008 death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday declined to accept a trial judge's conclusion that Melissa Lucio, who has spent 18 years on death row, is actually innocent of capital murder in the death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah.
The divided ruling leaves Lucio, 58, on death row. She came within days of execution in 2022, when the same court halted her lethal injection and ordered a review of her claims.
Lucio was convicted in 2008 in connection with Mariah's death. Prosecutors said the child died from severe head trauma caused by abuse, and pointed to bruises on her body. Her defense has argued that Mariah was not beaten but suffered injuries in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before she died.
After the appeals court ordered a review, Lucio's original trial judge issued a 62-page ruling in 2024 finding her "actually innocent." That ruling also concluded that prosecutors had presented false testimony, suppressed evidence, and that new scientific evidence unavailable at trial undermined the state's case. Prosecutors had conceded during the appeal that they withheld material evidence.
The appeals court's unsigned majority opinion, backed by five of the all-Republican court's judges, held that the trial judge's ruling leaned too heavily on Lucio's account of events rather than the prosecution's. Four judges dissented.
Lucio's case drew bipartisan attention from lawmakers and celebrities, including criminal justice reform advocate Kim Kardashian and Amanda Knox, whose murder conviction in Italy was later overturned.
Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Lucio's attorneys, said the legal team would take the case to federal court. "We will proceed to federal court and do everything in our power to make sure Melissa ... an innocent mother who has suffered unbelievably, is not executed for a crime that never occurred," Potkin said.
If exonerated, Lucio would become the first woman declared innocent from Texas' death row, joining 18 exonerated men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. If executed, she would be the first Latina put to death by Texas since 1863 and the first woman the state has executed since 2014.