On the morning of July 28, 2003, 10-month-old Abelardo Casiano received severe burns from scalding water in a bathtub at an apartment in Austin, Texas.
Abelardo’s mother lived in Mexico, and the child lived with his father, Mauro Casiano, 31-year-old Carmen Mejia, Mejia’s four young children, and Mejia’s common-law husband, Jose Bonilla.
Bonilla and Casiano were working at the time. Mejia would later say that after she saw Abelardo in the tub, she grabbed him and “put cold water all over him,” a treatment for burns that she had learned growing up in Honduras.
She piled her kids in a car, received a few dollars for gas money from her landlord, and then drove with a friend to the North Lamar Family Clinic, which was five miles away. At the clinic, an employee told Mejia that they could not treat the child. Mejia left, returned home to get Abelardo’s Social Security card, then went to St. David’s Hospital, arriving at around 1:30 p.m.
St. David’s was a small hospital, ill-equipped for serious trauma, and its physicians sought to transfer Abelardo to a larger facility with a burn center. But Abelardo first needed to be stabilized, and it took hours for health care workers to administer fluids and medications and bring his body temperature back to normal. At around 5:30 p.m., Abelardo was transferred to Brackenridge Children’s Hospital. He was pronounced dead at 9:48 p.m. He had lost 70 percent of his skin.
Mejia had told Brooke Shertzer, a social worker at St. David’s, that Abelardo had burned himself by pulling a pot of boiling water on himself. Officers with the Austin Police Department went to the duplex on the night of July 28 and viewed the kitchen. They returned a few hours later, at 1 a.m. on July 29, after being told that Abelardo had received “immersion type burns.”
The officers ran a test on the bathroom tap water, recording a top temperature of 147.8 degrees. The duplex’s water heater, which lacked a safety control to prevent scalds, was set between 140 and 150 degrees. (An officer returned nine months later and recorded a tub temperature of 156.2 degrees.)
After Abelardo’s death, Detective Rogelio Sanchez brought Mejia to the police station for questioning. It was 11:22 p.m., and Mejia would be interrogated for the next 14 hours. She worried about her children, including her infant daughter, M.C., whom she was still nursing, and Sanchez told her they were fine.
Mejia initially told Sanchez what she had told Shertzer, that Abelardo pulled a pot off the stove. Sanchez told her that was inconsistent with Abelardo’s injuries. She then said that Abelardo had climbed into the tub on his own. Casiano, the boy’s father, was also at the police station, and he told Sanchez that his infant son wasn’t yet able to do that.
Mejia then pivoted. First, she said Casiano had raped her and put his son in the tub after Mejia rejected his sexual advances. Sanchez said that Casiano had an alibi for the time of these alleged incidents.
Mejia finally said that Abelardo had been burned in the tub when one of her daughters accidentally turned on the hot water. Unlike most of the interview, this last section was not recorded.
Sanchez would later testify that Mejia said in this unrecorded section that she found her daughter, Jennifer, who was 2 years old at the time, alone in the bathroom. Mejia would testify that she told Sanchez that Jennifer had alerted her to a problem in the bathroom, where she saw her oldest daughter, Anna, who was nearly 4 years old, standing next to the bathtub. This difference was crucial; Jennifer was too young and small to have put Abelardo in the bathtub.
While the police interrogated Mejia, Edward Carmona, an attorney hired by Bonilla to represent her, went to the police station, seeking to speak to his client. He was turned away and told that Mejia was not there.
Mejia was arrested on July 29, 2003, and ultimately charged with felony murder, injury to a child with serious injury, and injury to a child by omission. The last charge was based on the theory that she delayed seeking medical care for Abelardo.
Also on July 29, forensic interviewers at the Children’s Advocacy Center interviewed Mejia’s three oldest children, including her son, Jose, who was 6 years old. During the interviews, which were recorded, the children gave varied accounts of what happened at the apartment, but they never said that their mother was in the bathroom when Abelardo was scalded. The videotapes were turned over to an Austin police detective.
Austin police also interviewed Eliza Romero, Mejia’s landlord. She said that Mejia came to her door that morning and said that Abelardo had been burned. She told Detective Sanchez that Mejia was a good mother and that she “never had a neighbor like her.”
Juana Lucas, a friend, told police that she had gone with Mejia to the clinic and overheard the nurse tell Mejia that she needed to take Abelardo to the hospital because they didn’t treat children that young. Lucas said she urged Mejia to go home to get help from Bonilla, who had returned from work.
Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, the deputy medical examiner for Travis County, performed the autopsy on July 29. She noted the scalding on the lower part of Abelardo’s body, including the burns on his arms in a “glove-like configuration.” She also noted a bruise on the front of his head but said that there was no evidence of bleeding inside the brain. At the time she performed the autopsy, Peacock had only been given Mejia’s initial and false account to the police, which said that Abelardo had pulled a pot of hot water off the stove.
In her report, dated July 30, Peacock wrote that “based on the anatomic findings at autopsy, and investigation available to me at this time,” Abelardo died because of burn injuries. She ruled his death a homicide.
On August 1, Detective Kerry Scanlon interviewed the staff at the clinic, including Dr. Thieu Bui and Kathy Chau, a certified medical assistant. Bui’s attorney, Edel Ruiseco, was also present.
Chau said that Mejia and Lucas arrived at the clinic at around 12:15 p.m. The clinic was closed for lunch, but the door was open. Mejia said she needed to speak to a doctor. Chau described the injuries as “a little burn on the side of the head.”
Bui said that Chau told him that the “child got burned real bad,” and he told his assistant that the clinic did not treat these injuries and that she should tell Mejia to go to the emergency room.
Chau said that she then spoke with Mejia and told her the baby was in serious condition and needed to go to the hospital. She did not say that she or Bui offered to call 911 on Mejia’s behalf.
As the interview was ending, Scanlon asked whether anyone had contacted the clinic about Abelardo’s death. Bui said that he had received a call on July 30 from Peacock. Bui said Peacock repeatedly asked why he didn’t call 911. He said he told her he didn’t work on children with burns and asked rhetorically whether he needed to call 911 for every patient. He said he told Peacock, “I did my duty.”
At the time, Bui was under disciplinary review before the Texas Board of Medical Examiners for failing to refer a patient for psychiatric care. He settled the case on October 10, 2003, agreeing to a three-year restriction on his license and other requirements.
After Mejia’s arrest, her children were placed in foster care. Carmona was representing her in the criminal case and in the civil matter involving her children. He would later say that the cases were linked; the dismissal he sought in the criminal case could help the civil case get resolved in favor of Mejia and Bonilla.
On June 9, 2004, Carmona moved for state funding to hire an expert witness. The court granted the motion on August 31, 2004, and Carmona hired Raul Guajardo. Although a forensic scientist, Guajardo was not a medical professional and had no experience or expertise in burn care or analysis. He reviewed hospital records and photographs. In a report dated September 14, 2004, Guajardo said the “burn patterns are not consistent with someone intentionally forcing the baby into the hot water and intentionally causing the baby bodily injury.”
In late 2004, Diana Salazar, a more experienced attorney, joined Carmona in representing Mejia.
In April 2005, as the criminal case began moving to trial, the state told Carmona and Salazar that the video recordings of the Mejia children had been “lost.” No transcripts existed, only summaries.
Several social workers had interviewed the children while they were in state custody. In one interview, Anna talked about her “feelings of guilt concerning the death.” Just days after Abelardo’s death, she asked her younger sister, “Do you want me to burn you like we burned the baby?”
The trial in Travis County District Court began on September 14, 2005, with Judge Mike Lynch presiding. Prior to testimony, the state moved to prevent the defense from mentioning any references to Bui’s issues with the medical board and any hearsay evidence that any “one or more of [Ms. Mejia]’s children may have admitted causing the victim’s injury, or may have seen someone else cause the victim’s injury, or may have seen the victim cause his own injury.” Judge Lynch granted the motion.
Sanchez testified about the investigation and his interrogation of Mejia. He said that Mejia told him that her 2-year-old daughter had placed Abelardo in the tub. He said that this purported statement came after Mejia had been in custody for 14 hours, and, unlike her earlier statements, it was not recorded.
During cross-examination, Sanchez agreed that it was “unusual” to not have this part of the interview on tape.
“And it would be very helpful to this jury to have that last part of the interview, right, to see what it is that Ms. Mejia said right before she was booked, right?” Salazar asked.
Sanchez said, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Phylip Peltier, an investigator and retired police officer, testified as an expert on burn injuries. He said he had “pioneered” a technique that allowed him to re-create burn injury patterns using blue clothing dye.
“Every single splash, every single dot of water leaves a mark,” he said, which helped him determine the child’s position at the time of the injury.
Peltier testified that Abelardo was “held in the water,” not “placed in the water and just left there.” He said Abelardo suffered an immersion burn, which he said was caused by a person or part of a person being immersed in a scalding liquid. These burns left a “distinct border … that indicates to you a water line.”
Peltier said Abelardo had “sparing”—areas without burns—under his armpits, which indicated he “was held and stabilized by somebody placing a hand under each of his armpits.”
Peltier also said Jennnifer or Anna couldn’t have caused the injuries because they would have lacked the knowledge to get the water hot enough in a short period of time and wouldn’t have been able to hold Abelardo still without burning themselves.
Peacock did not testify, but Dr. Roberto Bayardo, the chief medical examiner for Travis County, testified about the autopsy and the cause of death. He said the injuries were inconsistent with Abelardo pulling a pot of hot water on himself or crawling into the bathtub and landing in hot water.
A prosecutor asked Bayardo about Abelardo’s head injuries, which included bruising, and he testified that the child’s skull was not fractured. Bayardo said Abelardo’s brain was swollen because of shock and the fluid used to treat the shock. He also said the bruises could have been caused by an IV stick.
Dr. Keith Kerr, a pediatric intensive-care physician at Brackenridge, had treated Abelardo at St. David’s and at Brackenridge. Kerr said that based on what he described as symmetrical burn patterns on the boy’s hands and legs, “The injuries are classic for a child being held down in the bathtub ... I have no doubt that this child was purposefully pushed down into the bathtub with the intention of harming the child.” He said that based on his observations, Abelardo “must have been held under scalding water for some period of time.” He testified that based on the unburned areas on Abelardo’s back, the child was trying to get out of the water, but “obviously somebody determined that was not going to happen.”
In addition, Kerr testified that the bruise on Abelardo’s head was a “major blow” that pointed toward “physical abuse.”
Kerr testified that Mejia’s other children wouldn’t have been able to put Abelardo in the bathtub. He also testified that any adult would have known the severity of Abelardo’s injuries and quickly sought medical attention. “If they brought him in right away, we would be able to have this baby alive today,” Kerr said. “He would have terrible … damage, but the child would be alive.”
During cross-examination, Kerr said he was unaware that Mejia had gone to the clinic prior to going to the hospital.
Dr. James Jackson, an emergency room physician at St. David’s, testified that it was possible that Abelardo’s head bruises could have been caused by medical personnel trying to insert an IV into the child’s head. He also testified that Abelardo’s injuries were more than an hour old when he arrived at the hospital, which greatly diminished his chances of survival.
Bui and Chau testified about their interactions with Mejia. Bui said he did not know about the extent of Abelardo’s burns. On cross-examination, Bui said he knew Abelardo was in a “very serious condition.” Chau said that she asked Mejia whether Chau should call an ambulance, and that Mejia refused the request. Because of Judge Lynch’s ruling, the jury did not hear about Bui’s disciplinary matter before the medical board.
Teresa Rodriguez, a social worker, testified that she visited Mejia at the jail to discuss permanent placement for her children. According to Rodriguez, Mejia said that she hoped she would receive probation. According to Rodriguez, Mejia said “she was always a good person, except that that day, she doesn’t know, just the devil gets in.”
During cross-examination, Rodriguez said she assumed that Mejia was talking about Anna. The defense would later contend that the state misrepresented Mejia’s statement to mean, “the devil gets in me ,” rather than just the devil gets in.”
Shertzer, the hospital social worker, testified that Mejia appeared to lack an emotional response to Abelardo’s injuries and did not grasp the seriousness of the situation. On cross-examination, Shertzer said that Mejia’s response could have been a result of trauma.
Mejia testified that she did not harm Abelardo and was not in the bathroom when he was burned.
She said she had grown up in extreme poverty in Honduras and moved to the United States when she was 25 years old. Testifying through an interpreter, Mejia said she never went to school and was unable to read or write.
She said she loved Abelardo and that her children were playful and physical with the boy. She said they carried him around the house, put him on the bed, and sat with him to watch television.
Mejia said she was in her bedroom nursing M.C. when Jennifer came in and told her to go to the bathroom. There, she said, she found the boy in the tub and Anna standing nearby. She said she quickly pulled Abelardo out and applied cold water. She first called Bonilla, then sought help. She asked Romero for gas money, then went to Juana Lucas for more money, because she believed Abelardo lacked health insurance.
Lucas, Mejia, and the children went to the North Lamar clinic. By the time they got there, Mejia said, Abelardo appeared to be asleep and was no longer crying.
At the clinic, Mejia said she asked Chau for help. She said she showed Abelardo and his burns to Chau, who then went to speak to Bui. When Chau returned, Mejia testified, Chau told her that Bui “could not take care of a child less than two years.”
She said Chau asked if Mejia could drive to the hospital, and Mejia said she could. She testified that they first returned to the house to get Abelardo’s proof of citizenship, because she believed that he would not be treated without it. By then, Bonilla was home, and he drove the family to St. David’s.
Mejia said she initially lied to Sanchez about what happened because she was terrified of losing her children and was traumatized. She hadn’t slept or eaten in hours. She also said that she had a fear of the police based on her experiences in Honduras. She said she finally told him the truth, that Anna was in the bathroom when Abelardo was burned in the tub.
During cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Allison Wetzel asked Mejia why she didn’t just call 911. Mejia said she believed that Abelardo would be turned away from a hospital because he did not have insurance. This had almost happened with her own children, she said. Wetzel asked if Mejia at first avoided the hospital because she knew the hospital would ask a lot of questions. Mejia said that wasn’t true. She said she never believed Abelardo would die, that he would get the care he needed.
Based on the earlier testimony about a bruise on Abelardo’s head, Weitzel asked, “Who hit [him] on the head that day?” Mejia said she had no knowledge of any bruise.
Mejia was also asked about Rodriguez’s statement regarding the devil. Mejia testified that she was referring to Anna being reprimanded by Bonilla for putting Abelardo in the tub.
Mejia’s three oldest children testified via closed-circuit television. Although their testimony was often confusing and nonsensical, none of the children said Mejia had harmed Abelardo.
Anna, who had said in an interview that Abelardo burned himself, now implicated her brother and father. Jose said Anna was in the bathroom with Abelardo. Jennifer said that her brother turned on the water, but she remembered telling a prosecutor that Anna put Abelardo in the water.
Three forensic interviewers at the Children’s Advocacy Center also testified for the defense.
Alia Alsaffar testified that she interviewed Anna on July 29, 2003, and the girl “shut down and rolled up into a fetal position” when she was asked what happened. Anna finally said Abelardo had burned himself, and her younger sister and brother were there when it happened. She did not mention Mejia, Alsaffar said.
Aimie Pedemonte, another CAC interviewer, said that she interviewed Jose on July 29, 2003, and he gave several accounts of what happened. First he said that Abelardo’s father was in the bathroom at the time his son was burned. Then he said that Abelardo pulled a pot of hot water from a barbecue pit onto his head. She also testified that the videos had been lost, which prevented her from refreshing her memory.
Cindy Cantu testified that she interviewed Jose in 2005. She said he told her that he saw Abelardo in the bathtub by himself and that Mejia came out of the bedroom after the child was burned and quickly called Bonilla. Cantu said that when she asked Jose who put the baby in the hot water, the boy said that he knew the difference between hot and cold water but “maybe it was one of the little ones because they don’t know.”
Carmona and Salazar did not present any expert testimony about Abelardo’s burns. Before the trial, the attorneys realized Guajardo was a flawed witness because he was not a medical professional and was unqualified to give an expert opinion on burn injuries.
The state called two rebuttal witnesses. Dr. Rene Jankowski, a pediatric intensive-care physician at Children’s Hospital in Austin, testified that a “perfectly normal sized 3-year-old wouldn’t be able to, like, gracefully pick up a 10-month-old and sit them in a bathtub the way an adult would.” Jankowski said that toddlers can be “all over the place” and that a “3-year-old has no coordination to contain a baby like that.”
Jankowski also said that she had experience with burns and burn patterns and that Abelardo suffered a “straight line injury” that indicated he was held still in the tub. Neither Anna nor Jennifer would have the “strength and coordination to do that.”
Dr. Lee Carter, a psychologist from Waco, testified as an expert on how children make statements and change stories, often to please adults.
He said: “Young children, by virtue of their young developmental stage and their dependence on adults to define right and wrong, are particularly susceptible to suggestion by adults, especially if that adult happens to
be their primary caregiver … If a child has witnessed a parent act in an aggressive manner toward one child, it makes sense that that child would also assume that this same adult is capable of punishing me in a harsh manner as well.”
On cross-examination, Carter acknowledged that he had not reviewed the children’s statements and had only read the district attorney’s summary of the case. He also said that witnessing a tragic accident could also lead to chaos and confusion in a child’s mind.
During closing arguments, Carmona said: “The State would like you to believe that this whole injury, it is all Carmen’s fault, but I am asking you to recall the evidence that you heard about all the chaos and the confusion of this morning. We are not playing the blame game here … There were four very active young children at home at the time that this injury happened. It could have been one of them. These children are too young to be capable of this kind of evil. It was an accident. Accidents happen.”
In her closing argument, Wetzel said the state’s expert witnesses had provided the pathway to convict Mejia. “The only way that these burns got on [Abelardo’s] body is the way it was described, not something that Carmen the liar made up or that her lawyer is telling you.”
On September 27, 2005, the jury convicted Mejia on all three charges. The next day, the jury sentenced her to three terms of life in prison, with the sentences running concurrently.
Mejia appealed, arguing there had been insufficient evidence to support her conviction on the charge of injury to a child by omission. She also said that her trial was constitutionally unfair because the state lost the videotapes of her children’s interviews.
A three-judge panel from the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, affirmed the conviction on May 29, 2008. It said the evidence to convict on the omission charge was sufficient and that Mejia was unable to show that the state acted in bad faith in losing the videos or that the lost evidence was exculpatory.
On August 8, 2014, Mejia filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The motion said the state had violated her right to a fair trial by preventing the jury from hearing about Peacock’s interaction with Bui. It also said that Mejia had been denied the right to meet with her attorney during the police interrogation and that she hadn’t clearly waived her Miranda rights during that interrogation. In addition, the petition said that Carmona and Salazar had provided ineffective representation, because they failed to present expert testimony about scalding burns and about Mejia’s response to the child’s injuries. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied the writ petition, without written order, on October 8, 2014.
In 2015, Art Guerro, the bailiff at Mejia’s trial, reached out to the Innocence Project. He had observed the trial, seen Mejia’s demeanor, and been troubled ever since by the verdict. In 2021, the organization began representing Mejia.
On August 30, 2024, Mejia filed a second state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. She was now represented by Vanessa Potkin and Timothy Gumkowski of the Innocence Project, later joined by Shabel Castro. In addition, the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office was also re-investigating Mejia’s conviction and had discovered evidence that supported her habeas claims.
At a series of hearings before Judge P. David Wahlberg in late 2024 and early 2025, Mejia’s habeas team presented evidence that Abelardo’s death was a tragic accident, not a crime.
On September 25, 2024, Anna testified at a hearing that she was “like a hundred percent” certain that she turned on the hot water in the bathtub. Jose and Jennifer were also in the bathroom with her, Anna said, but her mother was not there.
Anna and her siblings had first been placed in foster care and then in closed adoptions. Until the habeas hearing, Anna had not seen or spoken with her mother since the day of the accident.
Anna testified that the accident had haunted her for years. She said as a teenager she related her feelings of guilt to her adoptive mother who told her that it was not her fault; she was just a child.
Dr. James Gallagher, the director of the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center in New York, testified that there was no evidence to support the state’s theory that Abelardo’s injuries were the result of an intentional act by an adult; his injuries were consistent with an accidental burn.
Because of the extremely high temperature of the hot water, Abelardo could have received life-threatening burns in a matter of seconds, Gallagher said, and the symmetrical appearance of the burns did not indicate abuse or intent. “The symmetry and stability of burn injuries also may simply be reflective of a burn incurred quickly in incredibly hot water,” Gallagher said in a report.
Gallagher also said that contrary to the testimony of the state’s expert trial witnesses, it was common for people to be unable to recognize the severity of a burn and respond appropriately. This was particularly true with burn cases involving infants. The children appear to be resting but are actually losing consciousness, Gallagher testified.
Gallagher also said that Kerr had testified incorrectly about Abelardo’s chances of survival after the scalding. Based on the boy’s injuries, Gallagher said, even if Abelardo had received immediate treatment at a world-class burn center, it was far more likely that he would have died than lived.
Dr. Wendy Shields, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and its Center for Injury Research and Policy, testified at the hearing as an expert on scald burns and the prevention of home injuries. She said the water temperature at Mejia’s duplex was set too high, beyond the maximum of 120 degrees, and that it was unlikely that Mejia would have known that a problem existed.
In addition, Shields testified that she agreed with Gallagher about the general public’s lack of knowledge on how to recognize severe burns, which often resulted in a delay of treatment. Shields said it was “completely reasonable” for Mejia to first seek care at the clinic.
As part of the habeas petition, the state asked Peacock to reevaluate the case and her findings, based in part on Anna’s pre-hearing affidavit, Gallagher’s report, and the Austin Police Department’s records of the water temperature in the apartment. Peacock warned the state not to expect her to change any findings.
But after her review, Peacock contacted the medical examiner’s office and changed the cause of death on Abelardo’s death certificate from homicide to accident. She testified that it was the “right thing to do.”
Peacock testified that when she made her initial findings, she relied on the discrepancy between what the police provided to her as Mejia’s explanation for the burn injuries—that Abelardo had pulled a pot of hot water down from the stove—and the burn patterns she observed during the autopsy. At the time, she testified, she was not aware of the water temperature settings at the duplex or that one of Mejia’s children had said she had turned on the hot water.
Peacock also testified that the bruising on Abelardo’s head did not contribute to his death and was “quite common” for children that age. It was not an indication of abuse.
Carmona also testified at the evidentiary hearing. He said that he hired Guajardo based on the belief that he needed an expert witness who spoke Spanish to make Mejia “feel more comfortable.
After he realized that Guajardo would not be able to testify as an expert burn witness, he informally asked the court for money to hire someone else. The judge refused, he said. Carmona testified that he never filed a formal motion to hire another witness, which would have preserved the issue for appeal, and that there was no strategic reason for not retaining a new expert. Salazar submitted an affidavit that also acknowledged the failure to retain a burn expert.
Kerr and Peltier did not testify at the hearings, but each submitted affidavits that recanted much of their trial testimony.
Kerr said that when he testified at Mejia’s trial, he did not know that Anna had taken responsibility for Abelardo’s injuries or that Mejia had taken the child to a clinic before taking him to the hospital. He said that the clinic “had a responsibility to call an ambulance,” and its failure to do so “contributed to the delay in care.”
Kerr said that after reviewing the affidavits and reports from Gallagher, Peacock, and Shields, “[Abelardo’s] injuries and ultimate death could have been accidentally caused by the children in this case.”
Peltier came to the same conclusion, writing in his affidavit that the burn injuries could have been due to an accident. He said the burn patterns were consistent with an infant being in a bathtub and “hot water rising as the tub was filled.”
In a motion filed on June 11, 2025, after the evidentiary hearings, Mejia’s attorneys said she had been wrongfully convicted based on false or misleading testimony by the state’s expert witnesses. It didn’t matter that the testimony was given in good faith; it was still false, the motion said, and violated Mejia’s right to due process. The motion also said that testimony from the hearings supported Mejia’s claim that her trial attorneys were deficient when they failed to obtain a burn expert who could have testified that Abelardo’s injuries could have been the result of an accident and that Mejia acted reasonably when she sought care for the child.
“Ms. Mejia’s assertion of innocence is now firmly established by new evidence,” the motion said. “This evidence shows clearly and convincingly that, in light of the new evidence, no jury would convict her. In fact, this is a case that, in light of the new evidence, would likely never be pursued with criminal charges or a prosecution because it has now been classified as accidental by the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.”
In its response, filed July 10, 2025, the state agreed with Mejia.
“At every turn, the State’s investigation has uncovered evidence that lends support to Applicant’s allegations and facts that back up the constitutional and statutory claims she has raised,” the response said.
There was also substantial new evidence of Mejia’s innocence, including her daughter’s affidavit and testimony, the new statements from the trial’s expert witnesses, and Gallagher’s report, the state said.
On September 26, 2025, Judge Wahlberg recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant Mejia’s habeas petition. In his 107-page recommendation and findings of fact, Judge Wahlberg wrote that Mejia’s “trial was infected with constitutional error, that scientific evidence relied on by the State at Applicant’s trial has now been contradicted by relevant scientific evidence, and that Applicant is innocent of the crimes for which she was convicted and has been imprisoned for the past 22 years.”
On January 22, 2026, the Court of Criminal Appeals granted Mejia’s writ on grounds of actual innocence. All the judges agreed, except for two judges who dissented in part, agreeing that the writ should be granted, just not on the basis of actual innocence.
Judge Wahlberg granted the state’s motion to dismiss the case at a hearing on March 9, 2026.
Speaking for the state at the hearing, Colin Bellair, an assistant district attorney with the Travis County CIU, apologized to Mejia. “In this case from the start, the worst was assumed, that this was an intentional act,” he said. “It was decided that a woman with no criminal history, no history of child abuse, was in the words of the trial prosecutor, or had in the words of the trial prosecutor, ‘The coldest, darkest, blackest, evil heart that you can have.’ We could not have been more wrong.”
Gumkowski told the court, “The proceeding today is an opportunity for the public to see firsthand and to hear first-hand the devastating, direct impact of Carmen’s wrongful conviction as well as the almost tsunami-like ripple effect that it’s had on so many lives and so many people.”
Castro told the court that the closed adoptions of Mejia’s children prevented their mother from contacting them for years. Still, she said, “Ms. Mejia’s spirit has not been broken by the severe injustices that she has faced and all the ways in which this wrongful conviction have upended her life. Her light has not been dimmed and her voice remains strong.”
Mejia’s youngest daughter, M.C., spoke at the hearing. She said she and her sisters and brother knew the truth about what happened that day. “I often wonder if everyone involved in that case had known the full story, would we have even been separated,” she said. “After more than 20 years of separation, all we are asking for now is the chance to be a family.”
Mejia spoke briefly. She said that through her darkest times, she kept her faith and her hope that God would hear her prayers.
Guerro, the bailiff who first brought the case to the attention of Potkin, spoke at the hearing. Judge Wohlberg called him the hero in this tragedy. Guerro said he wasn’t even supposed to work Mejia’s trial; he was filling in for a co-worker on vacation.
“I wanted Ms. Mejia to know that from the time that you were taken from this place to prison, you were not forgotten, you were not forgotten,” he said. “There was somebody. Somebody thinking about you the whole time. But just trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. And it possibly took me this long period of time to bring it together.”
After the dismissal, Mejia was briefly held under a detainer through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, because her legal status to remain in the United States had expired while she was in prison. The agency lifted the detainer on March 10, 2026.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 03-18-2026
