{"id":446330,"date":"2026-09-24T15:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/446330\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:06:11","slug":"lower-courts-findings-on-melissa-lucios-innocence-struck-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/446330\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower court\u2019s findings on Melissa Lucio\u2019s innocence struck down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday rejected a lower court\u2019s finding that death row inmate Melissa Lucio is innocent of the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n

Lucio has spent 18 years on death row after being convicted of killing her daughter, Mariah Alvarez. But questions about Lucio\u2019s possible innocence have lingered for years, stemming from questions of whether Mariah\u2019s fatal head trauma was caused by abuse or an accidental fall down the stairs.<\/p>\n

The appeals court stayed<\/a> Lucio\u2019s execution in 2022 to allow a lower court to review claims that new scientific evidence would prove her innocence and that suppressed evidence had contributed to her conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In separate 2024 rulings, a district judge recommended that the state\u2019s highest criminal court overturn her sentence<\/a> and declare Lucio \u201cactually innocent<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the Court of Criminal Appeals cast doubt on her claims and said the lower-court rulings relied too heavily on Lucio\u2019s interpretation of events and not the prosecution\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decline to adopt any of the habeas court\u2019s findings and conclusions, which exclusively reflect Applicant\u2019s interpretation of the evidence and are often unsupported,\u201d the court said<\/a> in an unsigned opinion from which four of the nine judges dissented.<\/p>\n

Three judges \u2014 David Newell, Lee Finley and David Schenck \u00a0 \u2014 filed dissenting opinions and a fourth, Scott Walker, dissented from the ruling without filing an opinion.<\/p>\n

Newell noted that prosecutors conceded during Lucio\u2019s appeal that they had withheld material evidence during her trial, and admonished the court for ignoring their concession.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts in this case are devastating. This makes the State\u2019s failure to disclose material exculpatory evidence all the more tragic,\u201d Newell wrote.<\/p>\n

Any appeal on the court\u2019s ruling would go to the U.S. Supreme Court. If her exoneration holds, Lucio would be the first woman declared innocent from Texas death row, joining 18 exonerated men since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2315,27,2317,2316,29,28,14888,6473],"class_list":["post-446330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-death-penalty","tag-texas","tag-texas-court-of-criminal-appeals","tag-texas-death-row","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446330","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=446330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}