Texas inmate Melissa Lucio's death sentence should be overturned, judge says

HOUSTON (AP) – A judge has recommended overturning the conviction and death sentence of Texas woman Melissa Lucio, whose execution has been postponed until 2022 because of growing suspicions that she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter. the legal proceedings related to his death were dismissed.

On Friday, Senior State Judge Arturo Nelson approved a plea agreement between prosecutors and Lucio's attorneys, in which suppressed evidence, including witness statements from Lucio's children and a Child Protective Services report, would have supported Lucio's defense that his daughter, Mariah, died of head trauma. Two days before his death, he accidentally fell from a steep staircase.

According to a 33-page agreement between Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz's office and Lucio's attorneys, “he would not have been convicted based on the suppressed evidence.”

Nelson's motion goes to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final decision on whether Lucio's conviction and death sentence are overturned. No time has been set for the appellate court's ruling. Lucio's case has become popular among people, including Kim Kardashian.

“We hope and pray that the Court of Criminal Appeals agrees with the District Attorney, the defense attorney, and Judge Nelson and our mother can come home to her family. We have been without him for 17 years. We love him and miss him and can't wait to hold him,” Lucio's children said in a statement Monday.

An agreement on findings in Lucio's case has remained in limbo for 16 months before another judge, Gabriela Garcia. On April 5, Lucio's attorneys and Saenz issued a joint statement in which they discussed the findings Garcia is still pending.

On April 10, Presiding Judge Missy Medary of the Fifth District Court in South Texas ordered Nelson to resolve the outstanding findings in the case. Nelson, a retired judge who presided over Lucio's trial in 2008, approved the findings two days later.

It was not immediately clear why Nelson was assigned to review the findings. Court administrators for Garcia and Medari did not immediately return calls and emails seeking comment.

Lucio, 55, is scheduled for a lethal injection in April 2022 in Harlingen, a south Texas city of about 71,000, for the 2007 death of his daughter. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted his lethal injection two days before his scheduled execution so that Lucio's claims that new evidence exonerated him could be reconsidered.

Prior to the plea agreement filed by Nelson, prosecutors had long maintained that Mariah was the victim of abuse and noted that her body was bruised.

Lucio's case has garnered support from Kardashian and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody.

“Melissa Lucio has been in prison for over a decade and a half, which is an unimaginable injustice, but at least it can be reversed,” Moody said in a post on social platform X on Tuesday.

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Juan A. Lozano, Associated Press