|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday remanded Melissa Lucio’s habeas claims back to the trial court because the judge did not rule on each of her remaining claims.
Instead, state District Judge Arturo Nelson signed an agreed findings and facts and conclusions of law submitted by the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office and Lucio’s appellate attorneys on a single claim: Lucio did not receive favorable evidence that would have corroborated her claim that her 2-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez died from a fall, not child abuse.
Lucio, 55, is the first Mexican-American woman to be sentenced to death in Texas. She has been on Texas Death Row since her July 2008 conviction for the murder of her daughter.
In April, Nelson signed the rare agreed order between prosecutors and appellate attorneys that recommended her conviction and sentence be tossed.
In a joint statement, Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz and Vanessa Potkin, an appellate attorney with the Innocence Project representing Lucio, said the joint filing Nelson signed is an acknowledgement that evidence was withheld.
“This joint filing acknowledges that Melissa’s legal team did not have access to information favorable to her defense at the time of trial, thereby entitling her to habeas corpus relief from her conviction and sentence,” the statement reads. “The Agreed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law are under review by the trial court.
That evidence included that one of her children actually saw Mariah fall down the stairs, and that her children told Child Protective Services and police that she was not physically abusive to Mariah or the other children. The evidence also included a CPS report where Lucio’s children told an investigator that their mother was worried about Mariah following the fall and was caring for her before the child died.
At the time of her trial, Lucio’s attorneys only had summaries of these reports that left out the exculpatory evidence, according to the order.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on April 25, 2022 ruled that four of Lucio’s nine claims in her writ of habeas corpus, which was filed on April 18, 2022, met the requirements to stay her execution and remanded the case to the trial court.
Her execution was scheduled for April 27, 2022.
Now, the appellate court is remanding for the court to rule on the three remaining claims that were not the subject of the order Nelson signed in April.
“However, the agreed findings and conclusions do not address any of Applicant’s other remanded claims,” the Thursday order stated.
The parties had asked the appellate court if the other three claims could be held off on while it ruled on the agreed claim regarding favorable evidence being held from Lucio at trial.
“We decline the trial court’s invitation to engage in piecemeal litigation,” the Thursday order stated.
That order gives the trial court 90 days to rule on the remaining claims and to then immediately forward it back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
“Any requests for extensions of the time period set forth above shall be made by the trial court or on its behalf and directed to this Court,” the order stated.
Lucio, who has long maintained her innocence, remains jailed at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Patrick L. O’ Daniel facility in Gatesville, Texas.
