Execution Halted, Melissa Lucio's Legal Team Vows to 'Continue Fighting'

Lawyers representing Melissa Lucio vowed to "continue fighting" to prove her innocence after a Texas appeals court on Monday granted the mother of 14--who advocates say was wrongfully convicted of murdering her two-year-old daughter in 2007--a stay of execution, two days before she was scheduled to be killed by lethal injection.

"All of the new evidence of her innocence has never before been considered by any court."

The Innocence Project reports that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent Lucio's case back to the Cameron County court where she was originally tried amid concerns that she did not killer her daughter, Mariah Alvarez, and that prosecutors presented false testimony at her trial and hid evidence from the defense.

Supporters have also cited Lucio's coerced confession--upon which the prosecution relied almost entirely--as grounds for a new trial.

"I am grateful the court has given me the chance to live and prove my innocence," Lucio said in a statement following her reprieve. "Mariah is in my heart today and always. I am grateful to have more days to be a mother to my children and a grandmother to my grandchildren."

Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Lucio's lawyers, said that the appellate court "did the right thing by stopping Melissa's execution."

"Medical evidence shows that Mariah's death was consistent with an accident. But for the state's use of false testimony, no juror would have voted to convict Melissa of capital murder because no murder occurred," she continued. "It would have shocked the public's conscience for Melissa to be put to death based on false and incomplete medical evidence for a crime that never even happened."

"All of the new evidence of her innocence has never before been considered by any court," Potkin added. "The court's stay allows us to continue fighting alongside Melissa to overturn her wrongful conviction."

According to The Texas Tribune:

Questions over Mariah Alvarez's death and Lucio's role in it have lingered since the now 53-year-old mother was sentenced to death in 2008. In recent months, concerns about Lucio's possible innocence--greatest among them whether Mariah's fatal head trauma was caused by abuse or an accidental fall down the stairs--have only been amplified.

More than two-thirds of the Texas Senate and a majority of the Texas House of Representatives pleaded for the parole board and governor to halt Lucio's execution. The lawmakers have been joined by an ever-growing list of people, including at least five of Lucio's former jurors.

Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach, a death penalty supporter, on Monday described the case as "the most troubling I've ever seen, possibly the most troubling in the history of our state."