The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday halted the execution of 52-year-old Melissa Lucio, who was convicted of murder in connection with the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah.
Lucio’s case had been the subject of widespread advocacy in the criminal justice world, including from celebrities like Kim Kardashian. Lucio was set to die on Wednesday.
The Monday decision sends Lucio’s case back to the Cameron County court, where she was originally tried. The ruling came just minutes before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was scheduled to vote on whether to recommend Gov. Greg Abbott delay Lucio’s previously scheduled execution for at least 120 days. The parole board on Monday said they would no longer be making a decision.
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“I am grateful to have more days to be a mother to my children and a grandmother to my grandchildren. I will use my time to help bring them to Christ. I am deeply grateful to everyone who prayed for me and spoke out on my behalf,” Lucio said in a statement.
The Monday decision notes that Lucio raised nine claims in her application for relief, including that the state used false testimony, that she is “actually innocent,” and that the state “suppressed favorite material evidence.” The court appears determined that those claims should be reviewed by a trial court—and thus the execution should not proceed any sooner.
“We know that Melissa’s children—Mariah’s brothers and sisters—and Mariah’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles are all relieved and grateful that Melissa’s life will not be taken by the State of Texas,” one of Lucio’s lawyers, said in a statement. “Melissa is entitled to a new, fair trial.”
Kardashian also took to Twitter on Monday to express her excitement over the ruling. “Best news ever!!! Melissa Lucio has been on death row for over 14 years for her daughter’s death that was a tragic accident,” she wrote.
The stay marks a breakthrough win for a woman who has steadfastly maintained her innocence and claimed that her daughter’s death was the result of a tragic fall down a flight of stairs in their Harlingen, Texas, apartment. Her lawyers also maintain that new evidence shows Mariah’s injuries are consistent with Lucio’s claims, and that her conviction was based at least in part on a coerced confession.
Prosecutors have long claimed that Lucio confessed to the crime and that the toddler’s death was the result of child abuse.
Over 100 lawmakers, family members, celebrities, social justice advocates, and even half of the jury who originally decided her fate have recently been fighting for her clemency—or at least a new trial. Among those most vocal was Amanda Knox, who tweeted on Monday that she was in Texas to support Lucio, as well as the Innocence Project, which has taken up the cause.
“The system has failed Melissa Lucio, and her daughter Mariah, at every turn, and… proceeding forward with Ms. Lucio’s execution on Wednesday would be a shocking miscarriage of justice and an irreparable stain on the State of Texas,” Texas Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano) said in a statement to The Daily Beast prior to the decision.
The Republican added that he believed “strongly that clemency, commutation or a reprieve should be granted without further delay.”
Court documents state that on Feb. 17, 2007, paramedics arrived at the home where Lucio and nine of her children lived to find 2-year-old Mariah “unattended and lying on her back in the middle of the floor not breathing and with no pulse.”
“Her body was covered with bruises in various stages of healing, her arm had been broken for several weeks, she had a bite mark on her back, and some of her hair had been pulled out,” a 2021 appellate court opinion states.
Ultimately, Mariah was pronounced dead at a local hospital, and a medical examiner’s office concluded she died from a blow to the head. Prosecutors alleged that Lucio told authorities Mariah had fallen down the stairs, and during a taped interview admitted to previously “spanking” her daughter.
During the lengthy interview, Lucio denied fatally hurting her daughter more than 100 times, according to her lawyers. But, at one point during the interview, Lucio also admitted to being “responsible for it.”
“I guess I did it,” she added.
The alleged confession was at the crux of the prosecution’s case when they charged Lucio with capital murder. Her lawyers, however, claim her statement was wrongly interpreted and tainted the rest of the investigation into Mariah’s death.
A 12-person jury sided with the prosecution in 2008 and Lucio was ultimately sentenced to death. Since the conviction, her legal team has filed various appeals to stop her execution, including a 2019 appeal that claimed she was not allowed to present evidence to question the validity of her supposed confession.
“I knew that what I was accused of doing was not true. My children have always been my world and although my choices in life were not good I would have never hurt any of my children in such a way,” Lucio wrote in one letter to Texas lawmakers, according to the AP.
On Monday, Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project, said that the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals “did the right thing by stopping Melissa’s execution.”
“Medical evidence shows that Mariah’s death was consistent with an accident. But for the State’s use of false testimony, no juror would have voted to convict Melissa of capital murder because no murder occurred,” Potkin said in a statement.
“It would have shocked the public’s conscience for Melissa to be put to death based on the false and incomplete medical evidence for a crime that never even happened. All of the new evidence of her innocence has never before been considered by any court.”
