[CW: harm to children]

The crime
Two-year-old Mariah Alvarez, the twelfth of Melissa Lucio’s fourteen children, was pronounced dead February 17, 2007 in Harlingen, TX after falling asleep and not waking up. Extensive bruising and healed bone breaks, along with a cranial bleed, led a forensic pathologist to conclude that the toddler had been beaten to death; Lucio was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death — despite ample evidence, or at least reasonable doubt, that Alvarez’s tragic demise was an accident, and that the DA presiding over Lucio’s case was corrupt.