After 15 Years on Death Row, A Texas Mother May Turn Out to Be Innocent
Over 184 individuals are on death row in the state of Texas. The majority of them - 131 to be exact - are Black and Hispanic. One of them, Melissa Elizabeth Lucio, was found guilty in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter.
Fifteen years later, she may have a shot at freedom.
On Feb. 17, 2007, paramedics responded to Lucio’s home in Brownsville after the youngest of her 12 children, 2-year-old daughter Mariah, was “turning purple” and became unresponsive two days after falling down a flight of stairs, according to The Innocence Project.
When Mariah died at the hospital, her mother was taken into questioning. It’s alleged that investigators coerced Lucio into making a false confession regarding having a hand in her daughter’s death.
That was fuel for prosecutors to land on a guilty verdict at her trial. Lucio was sentenced to death in 2008 and has lived on death row ever since. After a team of legal experts and advocates banded together to revisit her case, they found critical evidence that proved her innocence was never mentioned in court.
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Signing a 33-page court document — obtained by PEOPLE — listing agreed-upon findings between the parties, Senior Judge Arturo Nelson said Lucio’s conviction and death sentence should be overturned and ordered the court filings sent to Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals.
But the legal parties and judge agree that important evidence was suppressed at her trial, including a Child Protective Services report detailing interviews with five of Lucio’s children, per the new court filing.
Shortly after Mariah’s death, the girl’s brother, Bobby Alvarez, then 7, said he had seen Mariah fall “down some stairs” two days earlier, per that suppressed report quoted in the filing. The boy also said “he has never seen anyone hit Mariah.” Such evidence was important when considering Mariah’s cause of death, per the new court filing.
“That suppressed evidence informs a medical diagnosis consistent with Applicant’s defense: that Mariah died as the result of accidental trauma,” the filing states.
In 2022, Lucio was granted a stay of execution just two days before she was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. The Innocence Project, Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Defender for the Western District of Texas, Cornell University Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and attorneys from O’Melveny & Myers LLP filed a habeas petition to buy her some time.
It’s unclear how long the process could take in the appeals court. However, her family remains hopeful that she’ll be freed.
“It’s been 17 years that we have been without her. We love her and miss her and can’t wait to hug her,” said Lucio’s son Bobby Alvarez in a statement.
