Appeals court stops exoneration in death penalty case

The pending execution of a woman who claims she was wrongly convicted of killing her 2-year-old daughter in 2007 has been thrown back into legal limbo.

An earlier trial judge’s finding that Melissa Lucio did not fatally abuse her daughter has been overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The same appeals court halted the woman’s 2022 execution and ordered her case to be closely reviewed by Texas District Judge Arturo Nelson, who had presided over her trial.

In April 2024, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz disclosed that his predecessor had withheld evidence from the 2008 trial showing injuries to Lucia’s daughter, Mariah, were consistent with a fall instead of the alleged abuse. A week later, Nelson released his finding that Lucio, 58, “is actually innocent” and has “met her burden of proof, by a preponderance of the evidence, that she would not have been convicted in light of the suppressed evidence.”

Therefore, Nelson wrote, the “court concludes that applicant is entitled to habeas corpus relief from her conviction and sentence in this cause under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.”

But in its 5-4 decision handed down Sept. 24, the state criminal appeals court rejected Nelson’s conclusion in part because he had given too much weight to Lucio’s memory of events: “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. Instead, we take on our role as the ultimate factfinder in habeas cases and dispose of applicant’s remanded allegations based upon our independent review of the record.”

Read the full article at Baptist News Global.