(CNN)Fourteen years after she was sent to Texas' death row, Melissa's Lucio will finally get the chance to have new evidence of her innocence claims examined in state court.
Lucio, 53, was set to be executed Wednesday for capital murder in the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter. But two days before that, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted her a stay of execution, delaying her death so Lucio's trial court can explore whether she should receive a new trial.
The mother of 14, her family and attorneys say she was wrongfully convicted in her toddler Mariah's death. While prosecutors argued at trial that Lucio was an abusive mother who caused the injuries that led to the girl's death, Lucio's attorneys say those injuries were the result of a fall down stairs two days earlier outside the family's apartment.
To help decide whether Lucio will get a new trial, the appeals court ordered Lucio's trial court to review four of the nine claims she raised in her application for a writ of habeas corpus, which demands a public official show a valid reason for a person's detention.
A trial court-level judge will review her request and prosecutors' response before making a recommendation to the state appeals court, which will decide whether she gets a new trial. It's not clear how long the process will take.
"I don't think there's any way to predict" whether Lucio gets a new trial based on these four claims, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information...
A video shows the Green Party celebrating an election win in a foreign language. False. This video was posted before the election. It is a Bengali language campaign video posted by the Green Party ...