{"id":136049,"date":"2026-01-24T04:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/136049\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T04:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:00:08","slug":"travis-county-woman-accused-of-murdering-newborn-in-2005-declared-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/136049\/","title":{"rendered":"Travis County woman accused of murdering newborn in 2005 declared innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/r7xpwdf4piunk892.jpg\" alt=\"Carmen Mejia ruled innocent in 2005 murder case\" class=\"sr-only\" data-v-4292be72=\"\"\/>    <\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; A Travis County woman accused of murdering a newborn in 2005 has been declared innocent.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Carmen Mejia was serving three life sentences after being accused of submerging a 10-month-old baby in her care in scalding bath water.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The bailiff in Mejia&#8217;s original trial had concerns with the case and brought them into the Innocence Project in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">In a case review last year, Mejia&#8217;s child testified they turned on the faucet and a burn expert testified that the water heater had no temperature protection.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/carmen-majia.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-v-0dea8073=\"\"\/>  <\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The medical examiner changed the manner of death from homicide to an accident.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Mejia&#8217;s conviction on Friday, Jan. 23.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: Information from court documents<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/tag\/crime-publicsafety\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crime and Public Safety<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/tag\/us\/tx\/travis-county\/austin\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Austin<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/tag\/series\/crimewatch\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CrimeWatch<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; A Travis County woman accused of murdering a newborn in 2005 has been declared innocent.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1046,20826,223,1726,394,216,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-136049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-crime-publicsafety","12":"tag-crimewatch","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-series","15":"tag-travis-county","16":"tag-tx","17":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}