Efforts to free Melissa Lucio, a Texas girl whose execution was delayed in 2022 amid rising doubts she fatally beat her two-year-old daughter, have been considerably bolstered after a choose concluded that she is “truly harmless” of capital homicide.
Senior state district choose Arturo Nelson concluded that prosecutors introduced false testimony, suppressed proof and that new scientific proof that was not obtainable throughout Lucio’s 2008 trial undermines and contradicts proof introduced by the state. He beneficial that Lucio’s conviction and loss of life sentence be overturned.
“This court docket finds Lucio has glad her burden and produced clear and convincing proof that she is definitely harmless of the offense of capital homicide,” Nelson wrote in a 62-page ruling he signed in October however was not made public till Thursday.
Lucio has lengthy maintained she is harmless and that her daughter Mariah died of a head harm sustained in an unintentional fall down a steep staircase two days earlier than her loss of life.
Nelson’s suggestion has been despatched to the Texas court docket of legal appeals, which is able to make the ultimate choice in Lucio’s case. There was no timetable for a ruling by the appeals court docket.
Lucio’s case has garnered help from celebrities reminiscent of Kim Kardashian and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
“That is the very best information we might get going into the vacations,” John and Michelle Lucio, Melissa Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, stated in a press release. “We pray our mom can be dwelling quickly.”
Vanessa Potkin, director of particular litigation on the Innocence Undertaking and one in every of Lucio’s attorneys, stated Lucio was “despatched to loss of life row for against the law that by no means occurred”.
The Cameron county district lawyer’s workplace, which prosecuted Lucio, didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail searching for remark.
Lucio, 56, had been set for deadly injection in April 2022 for the 2007 loss of life of her daughter in Harlingen, a metropolis of about 71,000 in Texas’s southern tip. However the Texas court docket of legal appeals halted her deadly injection two days earlier than her execution so Lucio’s claims that new proof would exonerate her might be reviewed.
The appeals court docket had requested the trial court docket to overview 4 claims made by Lucio’s legal professionals: prosecutors used false testimony; beforehand unavailable scientific proof would preclude her conviction; Lucio is definitely harmless; and prosecutors suppressed proof favorable to her.
In April, Nelson had permitted an settlement between prosecutors and Lucio’s attorneys that discovered Lucio’s conviction needs to be overturned amid findings that proof in her homicide trial was suppressed. Prosecutors had beforehand maintained Mariah was the sufferer of abuse and famous her physique was coated in bruises.
The appeals court docket despatched the case again to Nelson in June, asking he additionally make suggestions within the different three claims.
Nelson present in favor of Lucio within the different three claims as nicely, together with faulting prosecutors for presenting medical skilled testimony that claimed the lady’s accidents might solely have been attributable to abuse and presenting “scientifically mistaken testimony” from a Texas ranger who claimed he might inform Lucio was responsible based mostly on her demeanor and physique language when interrogated.
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