By 
Story by TIM SULLIVAN
Another major legal victory for a Harlingen woman on Texas death row. A district judge in Cameron County is formally recommending the capital murder conviction against Melissa Lucio in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter be overturned.
Judge Arturo Nelson has ruled that Lucio is actually innocent. The ruling comes seven months after Nelson signed a fact-finding agreement stating the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office had withheld evidence favorable to Lucio and which would have changed the outcome of her trial.
In April 2022, Lucio was two days from being executed before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution in order to review the claims of suppressed evidence. That court will now decide whether to accept Judge Nelson’s recommendation that Lucio’s conviction and death sentence be set aside.
Lucio’s appeal attorneys say the evidence in question backs up her story that her 2-year-old daughter died, not from being beaten, but from an accidental fall down a staircase at the family’s Harlingen apartment.
