Federal Appeals Court Overturns Mother’s Conviction in Texas Child Murder Case That May Have Been an Accidental Death

Citing tri­al court inter­fer­ence in her right to present a defense, a fed­er­al appeals court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of a Texas moth­er who was sen­tenced to death on charges that she had mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter. In an unpub­lished, unsigned opin­ion issued on July 29, 2019, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that tri­al court rul­ings that blocked Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pic­tured) from call­ing an expert wit­ness to chal­lenge the reli­a­bil­i­ty of state­ments she gave to police vio­lat­ed Lucio’s right to present a ​“com­plete defense.” The appeals court reversed a fed­er­al dis­trict court deci­sion that had upheld Lucio’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and returned the case to the low­er court to grant Lucio a new trial.

The pros­e­cu­tion alleged that Lucio had phys­i­cal­ly abused her daugh­ter, Mariah, over a peri­od of time and that the child had been beat­en to death by her moth­er. Lucio’s lawyers con­test­ed the cause of death, pre­sent­ing expert tes­ti­mo­ny from a neu­ro­sur­geon that Mariah may instead have died from head trau­ma caused by falling down a flight of stairs. The pri­ma­ry evi­dence impli­cat­ing Lucio was a record­ing of state­ments she made to police dur­ing lengthy inter­ro­ga­tion the night her daugh­ter died. During that inter­ro­ga­tion, Lucio admit­ted to spank­ing Mariah, but denied ever hav­ing abused her. Late into the night, after hours of con­tin­u­ous inter­ro­ga­tion, Texas Ranger Victor Escalon pres­sured Lucio to say more. She respond­ed with: ​“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m respon­si­ble for it.” When Escalon lat­er asked her about spe­cif­ic bruis­es on her daughter’s body, Lucio said, ​“I guess I did it. I guess I did it.” 

The pros­e­cu­tion char­ac­ter­ized Lucio’s inter­ro­ga­tion as evi­dence that she had abused her daugh­ter, and there­fore must have killed her. Lucio’s lawyers sought to present tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist to explain the coer­cive effect of the police inter­ro­ga­tion on Lucio, whom Dr. John Pinkerman described as a ​“bat­tered woman” who ​“takes blame for every­thing that goes on in the fam­i­ly.” The tri­al court barred Pinkerman from tes­ti­fy­ing, assert­ing that his tes­ti­mo­ny was irrel­e­vant because Lucio had ​“denied ever hav­ing any­thing to do with the killing of the child.” 

The Fifth Circuit reject­ed the fac­tu­al and legal basis for the tri­al court’s find­ing, hold­ing that the exclu­sion of the evi­dence was ​“of such a mag­ni­tude or so egre­gious that [it] render[ed] the tri­al fundamentally unfair.”

The appeals court found that Pinkerman’s tes­ti­mo­ny would have pro­vid­ed impor­tant con­text for Lucio’s inter­ro­ga­tion and pos­si­bly caused jurors to doubt its reli­a­bil­i­ty. ​“If the inter­ro­ga­tion state­ment is tak­en away — or its valid­i­ty is under­mined — then the State’s case becomes much more ten­u­ous,” the court wrote. ​“A rea­son­able juror would have much less rea­son to infer that Lucio — rather than her hus­band, oth­er chil­dren, or Mariah her­self — caused Mariah’s injuries, much less her fatal head injury. To the extent that there was evi­dence beyond Lucio’s state­ment that impli­cat­ed her — such as oppor­tu­ni­ty as Mariah’s pri­ma­ry care­tak­er — it pales in com­par­i­son to the force of an appar­ent con­fes­sion of abuse.”

The Fifth Circuit also found that the tri­al court’s rea­son­ing unper­sua­sive, ​“The exclu­sion bears the hall­mark sign of arbi­trari­ness: com­plete irra­tional­i­ty,” the appeals pan­el wrote. ​“The state tri­al court assert­ed that Pinkerman’s testimony’s cast­ing doubt on the verac­i­ty of the inter­ro­ga­tion state­ment was not rel­e­vant because Lucio did not admit she struck the fatal blow. But the State’s argu­ment that Lucio struck the fatal blow relied on an infer­ence from the state­ments that she abused Mariah. To under­cut the State’s premise (i.e., Lucio abused Mariah) is to under­cut its con­clu­sion (i.e., Lucio killed Mariah).” 

Several peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row after being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of killing chil­dren. In at least three of those cas­es, evi­dence sug­gests that no crime occurred; the chil­dren died of med­ical con­di­tions or acci­dents, not homi­cide. Sabrina Butler was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Mississippi in 1990 for the death of her nine-month-old son. The baby stopped breath­ing, and resus­ci­ta­tion attempts left bruis­es that led police to accuse Butler of child abuse. Medical evi­dence indi­cat­ed that the cause of death was like­ly cys­tic kid­ney dis­ease or sud­den infant death syn­drome (SIDS). The Mississippi Supreme Court over­turned Butler’s con­vic­tion in 1992.

Rodricus Crawford was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, on charges that he had smoth­ered his infant son. Medical experts lat­er pro­vid­ed evi­dence that the pathol­o­gist who per­formed the autop­sy missed evi­dence of sep­sis in the blood and pneu­mo­nia in both lungs. Crawford was exon­er­at­ed in 2017.

Vicente Benavides was exon­er­at­ed in April 2018 after 26 years on California’s death row, wrong­ly con­vict­ed of rap­ing, sodom­iz­ing, and mur­der­ing his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daugh­ter. The California Supreme Court found that his con­vic­tion was the prod­uct of ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and ​“false” foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Medical evi­dence showed that the girl had nev­er been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and may actu­al­ly have died from being hit by a car.

Descriptions of oth­er prob­lem­at­ic cas­es involv­ing child vic­tims are avail­able here.