The Texas judge who oversaw a trial that convicted a mother of killing her 2-year-old daughter and sentenced her to death now says the woman is “actually innocent” and did not kill her child.

Melissa Elizabeth Lucio has been on death in Texas in the union for 16 years, according to PEOPLE. She was convicted in February 2007 of capital murder in the death of Mariah Alvarez, but she and her lawyers have insisted that the little girl died after an accidental fall down the stairs.

Senior Judge Arturo Nelson originally called for Lucio’s conviction to be overturned in April, saying that evidence was suppressed at trial that would have resulted in her acquittal.

In a new ruling last month — made public this week by the Innocence Project, which has taken on Lucio’s case — Nelson says that the 56-year-old mother is “actually innocent” and “did not kill her daughter.”

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will make the decision whether to overturn the conviction and sentence, but the court doesn’t have a tme frame to make the decision.

Nelson wrote that  there is “clear and convincing evidence that Mariah fell on some stairs two days before she died, just as Applicant told police,” as well as evidence that “Mariah’s extensive bruising was not caused by abuse but rather a complication of her fall.”

Evidence that never made into the trial included interviews with Lucio’s other children, who told investigators that their sister fell down the stairs and that their mother was not abusive. Some of the children said that their sister was in “declining health” after the fall.

“This is the best news we could get going into the holidays,” Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, John and Michelle Lucio, said in a statement provided with the release of Nelson’s ruling. “We pray our mother will be home soon.”

Nelson said in his ruling that Lucio “has satisfied her burden and produced clear and convincing evidence that she is actually innocent of the offense of capital murder,” adding that the medical examiner was incorrect in concluding that “physical abuse was the only explanation” for the girl’s death.

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[Featured image: Melissa Lucio/Innocence Project]