A Texas judge says that a mother who was previously convicted in 2008 of capital murder in the February 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter is 'actually innocent,' as Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals can now decide on her release.

Melissa Lucio was two days away from being put to death in Texas for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter when an appeals court intervened in 2022. Now, a judge says Lucio never committed the crime at all.

Melissa Lucio, a mother of 14 living in Brownsville, Texas, was arrested and charged in 2007 for the murder of her two-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez who had turned purple and unresponsive at

A death row inmate convicted of killing her toddler daughter is “actually innocent” of murder and should be freed from custody, the prisoner’s trial judge said in documents unearthed on Thursday.

Melissa Lucio may be set free after findings that prosecutors withheld evidence that her 2-year-old died of an accidental fall.

Judge Arturo Nelson said there was clear and convincing evidence that the death of Lucio’s 2-year-old daughter, Mariah, was caused by a fall.

Lucio has long maintained she is innocent and her daughter Mariah died of a head injury sustained in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before her death