Melissa Lucio has been on death row in Texas since she was convicted in the death of her 2-year-old daughter in 2008.

Summary

Judge Arturo C. Nelson, who oversaw Melissa Lucio’s 2008 murder trial, now believes she is “actually innocent” in the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah.

Lucio’s execution was stayed in 2022 after evidence emerged suggesting Mariah’s death resulted from an accidental fall, not abuse.

Nelson ruled that prosecutors illegally suppressed evidence supporting Lucio’s innocence, violating her constitutional rights, and recommended overturning her conviction and death sentence.

The case is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will decide whether to adopt Nelson’s recommendation.

  • Wolf314159@startrek.website
    12·
    14 hours ago

    Execution of innocent people is (and always has been) the entirely predictable, inevitable, and probably unavoidable result of capital punishment. There is no getting around the fact that, as long as the state executes prisoners, innocent people will be executed and “the state”, i.e. taxpayers, will pay more for it than they ever would have imprisoning the convicted for life.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
      1·
      4 hours ago

      We should only executing people who have incontrovertible evidence against them or who freely admit to the crime and are of sound mind.

  • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.socialEnglish
    15·
    16 hours ago

    I bet she still gets executed despite the proceeding judge’s opinion. It happened already in Missouri this year. The prosecuting attorney hit a potential juror during the jury selection because he was a young black male. There was contamination of evidence. The governor overturned the previous governors stay of execution. And in the end an innocent man was executed anyway.

  • SassyRamen@lemmy.world
    351·
    20 hours ago

    Holy fuck, that poor woman… I bet she’d take life in prison if it brought her daughter back. That hurts me to the core.

  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    8 hours ago

    It’s Texas, they’ve just been waiting to do it on the right week so they have something to distract from their worse politics

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    19 hours ago

    $10 says most death penalty state-sanctioned murder proponents would’ve proposed before 2022 (or even just before this verdict) that she was a clear-cut example of why it’s necessary because what kind of monster would definitely 100% verifiably beat their child to death? Fucking repugnant.