TEXAS, United States (AFP) — A woman who spent 22 years in a United States (US) prison over the death of a 10-month-old boy in her care was set free Wednesday, after courts ruled she was sentenced based on flawed testimony and incomplete evidence.

“I was strong, I believed in God,” Carmen Mejia, a native of Honduras, told reporters moments after leaving the Texas prison where she was held.

A deportation order had been pending against her as a result of her conviction, but immigration authorities lifted those restrictions following the new verdict, her defence team said.

Mejia, 54, expressed her gratitude to God and her lawyers, calling her release a “miracle.”

“While we are overjoyed that the courts finally recognise that Ms Mejia is innocent, this grave injustice should have never happened in the first place,” said Vanessa Potkin, Mejia’s attorney.

Mejia was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the death of a 10-month-old infant she was babysitting, who was critically burned by scalding bathwater in 2003. The child died in the hospital as a result of the burns.

Mejia was arrested and charged based on the testimony of a doctor and an expert who asserted that the burns had been intentionally inflicted by an adult.

She also lost custody of her four children, who were adopted and are now adults.

But her lawyers, with the help of medical experts, showed that the incident was a domestic accident caused by a faulty water heater that raised the water temperature above 60°C within seconds while Mejia’s daughter was bathing the baby in a tub.

In 2025, the doctor who performed the autopsy on the child reversed her determination regarding the cause of death, changing it from homicide to accidental.

She testified that she would have ruled it an accident had she possessed all the available information at the time.

This week, Travis County Judge David Wahlberg dismissed the charges against Mejia and ordered her release.

“We could not have been more wrong, and it turned a tragic accident into a wrongful conviction,” county prosecutor Collin Bellair said at the hearing, according to a statement by the Innocence Project, which campaigned for Mejia’s release.

“Nothing that I say, and nothing that we do in this courtroom today, can restore the time that was taken from you or undo the pain and separation that you and your children have had to endure,” said Sarah Byrom, another local prosecutor.