A Texas death row inmate is ‘actually innocent’ of her toddler’s murder and her conviction should be overturned, judge finds
CNN
Melissa Lucio was two days away from being put to death in Texas for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter when an appeals court intervened in 2022. Now, a judge says Lucio never committed the crime at all.
Melissa Lucio was two days away from being put to death in Texas for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter when an appeals court intervened in 2022. Now, a judge says Lucio never committed the crime at all. “Applicant is actually innocent; she did not kill her daughter,” state district Judge Arturo C. Nelson wrote in an October filing released to the public Thursday. It is now up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which had asked the judge to revisit the case, to determine whether Lucio should be released. “After 16 years on death row, it’s time for the nightmare to end. Melissa should be home right now with her children and grandchildren,” Vanessa Potkin with the Innocence Project, one of Lucio’s attorneys, said Thursday. The case highlights an inherent risk of capital punishment: putting an innocent person to death. At least 200 people sentenced to die since 1973 were later exonerated, including 18 in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Lucio is one of seven women on death row in Texas, which includes 174 condemned inmates in all.
Almost 5,400 firearms recovered from crime scenes in Caribbean nations - including Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago - can be sourced back to the US, according to the US Government Accountability Office.
When President Joe Biden’s aides were planning his visit to South America this week for a pair of leaders’ summits, two vastly different scenarios were in play.
After the suicide of a nonbinary student last February spurred a monthslong federal investigation, the US Department of Education found Title IX violations in an Oklahoma public school district including multiple failures to respond to notices of sexual harassment.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a source familiar with the move told CNN, a choice that would add to Trump’s list of provocative picks whose confirmation processes will test the loyalty of Senate Republicans.
Top Senate Republicans are withholding support for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general, while Democrats and at least one prominent GOP senator call for the release of an ethics report into the former congressman.
The FBI announced on Thursday the arrest of a Texas man who allegedly created and disseminated ISIS propaganda and wanted to commit a “9/11-style” attack in the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have big ambitions for making the federal government leaner and more efficient by reviewing its budget and operations from top to bottom.
The Ohio Senate on Wednesday greenlit a bill that would ban transgender students from using locker rooms and bathrooms associated with their gender identities.
In the days after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, allies described his transition effort as far more disciplined than his first post-victory period in 2016.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary Pete Hegseth has railed against women in combat, voiced support for troops accused and in some instances, convicted of war crimes, and advocated for the firing of the military’s most senior officers accused of supporting so-called “woke” policies.
The FBI is offering up to $25,000 in exchange for information about the suspect they believe set fire to several ballot boxes in the Pacific Northwest during early voting last month.