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    Texas Judge Finds Death Row Inmate Melissa Lucio Innocent In Daughter’s Death

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    In a court filing, the judge said the conviction of Melissa Lucio, whose scheduled execution in 2022 was halted, should be overturned. The state’s highest criminal court will now decide.A Texas district judge declared that a mother on death row is innocent in the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter, according to court documents filed in October but made public this week.The decision in the case now stands with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, which in 2022 halted a scheduled execution of the mother, Melissa Lucio, to gather more evidence. That included asking the district judge in the original trial, Arturo Nelson, to file an opinion. An execution date has not been rescheduled.Ms. Lucio, 56, who lived in the border city of Harlingen, was sentenced to death in 2008 after her daughter, Mariah Alvarez, died as a result of what prosecutors said was the mother’s physical abuse. Ms. Lucio and her lawyers have long maintained her innocence, arguing that Mariah died from complications after accidentally falling down a flight of stairs. An autopsy said the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.Judge Nelson sided with Ms. Lucio in his recent findings, writing that she was “actually innocent; she did not kill her daughter.”He added that, even regardless of that conclusion, Ms. Lucio had a right to have her conviction overturned because the state had used false testimony in her trial and withheld evidence that was favorable to her case. The judge also cited new scientific evidence that was unavailable during her trial.It was unclear on Saturday when the Court of Criminal Appeals would issue its ruling. Vanessa Potkin, one of Ms. Lucio’s lawyers and a special litigation director for the Innocence Project, said it could take a couple of months. Once that court rules, the case could be returned to trial court, at which point a prosecutor would decide if the case should be retried or the charges dismissed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Was Alabama’s Nitrogen Execution ‘Textbook’ or Botched? Sides Are Divided.

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      Alabama officials said the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution was a model for other states. Critics called it appalling and far from what the state promised.A day after Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner with nitrogen gas, officials vowed on Friday to continue using the method in executions despite witnesses’ accounts that the prisoner writhed on the gurney for at least two minutes.Two very different accounts of the execution emerged from the state’s death chamber in Atmore, Ala., where the state executed Kenneth Smith, 58, on Thursday night.The state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, called it a “textbook” execution that had made nitrogen hypoxia, as the process is known, a “proven” method that other states could emulate.“Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” Mr. Marshall said, addressing his counterparts across the country. “And we stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.”Meanwhile, Mr. Smith’s spiritual adviser and reporters who also witnessed the execution described an intense reaction in which Mr. Smith violently shook and writhed as the gas was administered, began breathing heavily and, finally, stopped moving.The descriptions were at odds with what the state had promised in court papers: that the untested method of using nitrogen gas through a face mask would “rapidly lower the oxygen level in the mask, ensuring unconsciousness in seconds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More