BROWNSVILLE, TX – Melissa Lucio, accused of killing her daughter, Mariah, in 2008 “is actually innocent; she did not kill her daughter,” said Judge Arturo Nelson here, reported Squire Patton Boggs (SQPD) last week.
This comes after Judge Nelson, the original trial judge, and Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz agreed the “previous prosecution team suppressed evidence supporting Ms. Lucio’s defense that her daughter died after an accidental fall,” said SQPD.
After finding the former district attorney “illegally withheld favorable evidence” sustaining the claim Mariah had died due to her injuries and not abuse, Judge Nelson ruled the “suppression of evidence violated Ms. Lucio’s constitutional rights under Brady v. Maryland and required a reversal of her conviction,” stated SQPD.
Lucio currently has three claims—including her claim of innocence. Two days before her scheduled execution in April 2022, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) had sent the remaining three claims to trial court.
In June of 2024, the CCA returned the case back to Judge Nelson for recommendations on the remaining claims.
SQPD said, in his recommendation with respect to Lucio’s claim of innocence, Judge Nelson wrote in his Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law (FFCL): “There is clear and convincing evidence that Mariah fell on some stairs before she died, just as (Lucio) told police; There is clear and convincing evidence that (Lucio) was highly susceptible to making a false confession under the interrogation techniques used on her;
“There is clear and convincing evidence that Mariah’s extensive bruising was not caused by abuse but rather a compilation of her fall; There is clear and convincing evidence that Mariah’s fatal head injury was caused by an accidental fall on stairs two days before she died; and there is clear and convincing evidence that the injuries to Mariah that (Lucio) could have caused, based on her confession (if true), were not clearly dangerous to human life and did not cause Mariah’s death.”
According to Director of Special Litigation of the Innocence Project Vanessa Potkin, “Melissa Lucio lived every parent’s nightmare (after the death of her daughter) from which she couldn’t wake up when she was sent to death row for a crime that never happened,” and after being on death row for the past 16 years, “it’s time for the nightmare to end.”
Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, in a statement, said, “This is the best news we could get going to the holidays” and, joined by her son, they added, “We pray our mother will be home soon,” wrote SQPD.
The Court concluded that “no rational juror could have convicted (Lucio) of killing her daughter after hearing all of the evidence from her original trial alongside all of the new evidence” presented.
Upon finding that the prior prosecution had withheld evidence including witness statements supporting that Mariah had “(fallen) down the stairs and were aware of her deteriorating condition in the days following her fall,” reported SQPD.
In response Judge Nelson ruled “the suppressed evidence… provided evidentiary support for the defense that Mariah’s head injury was accidental, and counters the State’s evidence that the injuries could have only been the result of intentional abuse.”
Additionally, Judge Nelson wrote: “(the) suppressed evidence informs a medical diagnosis consistent with (Lucio’s) defense: that Mariah died as a result of accidental trauma,” reported SQPD.
The case is now at the hands of the Texas Court of Appeals which will decide “whether to accept Judge Nelson’s recommendation that Ms. Lucio’s conviction and death sentence be set aside,” wrote SQPD.
