Texas Court Denies Innocence Claim for Death Row Inmate Melissa Lucio

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a lower court's innocence finding for Melissa Lucio, who has spent 18 years on death row for her daughter's 2007 death.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Rejects Innocence Ruling for Melissa Lucio

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday denied a finding that death row inmate Melissa Lucio is innocent of the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez, according to texastribune.org. The ruling deals a significant setback to Lucio, who has spent 18 years on death row after being convicted in connection with Mariah's death in Harlingen, Texas.

The central question in the case has long been whether Mariah's fatal head trauma resulted from abuse or an accidental fall down a flight of stairs — the explanation Lucio has maintained since the beginning. Paramedics who responded to Lucio's Harlingen home, where she lived with nine children, found Mariah badly injured and unresponsive. Hospital staff documented multiple bruises on the child's body and concluded she died from blunt force trauma to the head.

The appeals court had stayed Lucio's execution in 2022 and ordered a lower court to examine new scientific evidence that defense lawyers argued undermined testimony that Mariah's injuries could only have resulted from deliberate abuse. Defense lawyers also contended that prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to Lucio during her original trial.

In separate rulings in 2024, District Judge Arturo Nelson — who had presided over Lucio's original trial — recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals overturn her conviction and declare her "actually innocent." The higher court declined to follow that recommendation.

In an unsigned opinion, the court said Nelson's rulings relied too heavily on Lucio's version of events while discounting 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 wrote. Four of the nine judges dissented from the ruling.

Three judges — David Newell, Lee Finley and David Schenck — filed written dissenting opinions. A fourth, Scott Walker, dissented without filing an opinion. Newell pointed out that prosecutors had themselves conceded during the appeal that they withheld material evidence during Lucio's trial, and he admonished the majority for failing to reckon with that admission. "The facts in this case are devastating. This makes the State's failure to disclose material exculpatory evidence all the more tragic," Newell wrote.

Judges Burt Richardson and Gina Parker filed concurring opinions supporting the majority's decision. Parker's opinion was one page long, followed by eight photographs of Mariah's body showing bruises, scratches and what prosecutors at trial identified as a bite mark on her back. Parker wrote that she included the images "because a picture can be worth a thousand words."

Richardson authored a 132-page concurring opinion addressing, among other things, new evidence that Mariah had a blood coagulation disorder her family had not known about. Defense lawyers argued the disorder explained the bruising observed on the child's body. Richardson concluded, however, that the clotting disorder alone could not account for the extent of the bruising and described what he called "significant inexplicable dissonances" in Nelson's earlier rulings. "Even when viewed for any cumulative effect, the evidence [Lucio] presents undermines and contradicts other evidence that might otherwise offer a modicum of support for her case," Richardson wrote.

Lucio's attorney, Vanessa Potkin, said the defense intends to appeal Thursday's 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 Lucio were ultimately exonerated, she would become the first woman declared innocent from Texas death row. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 18 men have been exonerated in Texas.

Lucio's case has drawn substantial public attention over the years, including from members of the state legislature. Before the appeals court granted the stay of execution in 2022, a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers urged the state parole board to weigh Lucio's innocence claims.

Source: NYT US News