The Travis County District Attorney’s Office has dismissed the case of yet another person that judges say was wrongfully convicted of a major crime in Austin in the early 2000s.
Marshall Moreno was found guilty of sexual assault and indecency with a child in 2003, after his daughter accused him of raping her two years earlier. But the daughter, now in her 30s, recanted her accusation before District Judge Brandy Mueller at a hearing this July. Four months later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with Mueller that Moreno had been convicted solely on the basis of the daughter’s false testimony and is actually innocent. The D.A.’s Office dismissed Moreno’s case on Thursday, Dec. 18.
“Although dismissing his case won’t undo the 24 years Mr. Moreno spent incarcerated, we hope it helps him as he works toward rebuilding his life,” District Attorney José Garza said in a statement to the press.
According to a summation of the case approved by Judge Mueller in September, Moreno’s daughter, known in court documents as A.M., first recanted her testimony in 2020, contacting professor Charles Press at the Actual Innocence Clinic at UT-Austin. Press remembered his first interactions with A.M.
“She was upset and felt responsible for her father’s incarceration, even though she was a young child when she testified,” Press said. “I took her recantation at face value, but from experience, I am aware that some recantations in these kinds of cases are not credible – either because someone is pressuring them to recant, or simply because, over a long period of time, their memory of a traumatic event gets blurred. We spent quite some time speaking back and forth so our office could understand what led her to make a false outcry and why she was coming forward now.”
Press said he and his colleagues reviewed the available records in the case, including police reports, trial transcripts, and Child Protective Services files, all of which supported the recantation. “That process can take a very long time, and we were required to present a sworn statement from her before we could proceed in court,” Press said. “Over that time, I found her to be completely truthful, as well as very brave in coming forward and wanting to correct things.”
As his investigation proceeded, Press took Moreno on as a client and got the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit involved in the case. Members of the unit initiated their own investigation, interviewing A.M. to evaluate her credibility. Press assembled a habeas corpus petition on Moreno’s behalf and submitted it to Judge Mueller in November of 2024. A.M. presented a formal recantation in an affidavit to the court and, on July 10, appeared before the judge for a hearing on the habeas petition.
Members of the D.A.’s Office told the Chronicle that A.M. wept throughout the hearing. She said she had known she was lying when she testified against her father and that, ever since the verdict, had gone to sleep and woken up thinking about it.
A.M. also spoke about her childhood, full of chaos, violence, and insecurity. A 2005 appeal filed by Moreno described it in more detail, stating that A.M. and her brother were removed from their parents’ home in 1999, when A.M. was 8 years old, because of their father’s repeated physical abuse of their mother. According to Mueller’s summation of the case, the children lived briefly with their maternal grandmother before moving to a group foster home, where they acted out sexually. They were moved to another group foster home and A.M. began therapy with a licensed professional counselor. In September of 2001, A.M. acted out sexually again and her therapist asked if she had ever been sexually abused. A.M. said her father, on one occasion, had gotten on top of her and put his penis inside her.
According to Judge Mueller’s summation of the case, A.M. explained the accusation at the July 10 hearing by saying that she was trying to escape blame for her behavior. “I felt like I was trying to take the blame off – well, the focus off me and put it somewhere else,” she said, “so that I wouldn’t feel like I was so much in trouble for doing what I was doing.” She also said she accused her father because she believed it would please her foster mother, who later adopted her.
The manager of the D.A.’s Conviction Integrity Unit, Mia de Saint Victor, remembered the July 10 hearing and said that Judge Mueller’s legal summation only hints at the power of A.M.’s testimony. “The record doesn’t reflect the emotions that were displayed in the courtroom,” de Saint Victor said, “as the witness tearfully walked through her childhood and the events that led her to feel that she couldn’t stop the criminal justice process, once it had started.”
First Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger noted that the Moreno case is one of eight the CIU is investigating to determine whether other people convicted by Travis County juries deserve new trials or have valid claims of innocence. Strassburger added that the CIU will work this spring to clear the names of the men convicted in the yogurt shop murders.
The D.A.’s Office said they expect the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to soon transport Moreno from a prison hospital in Galveston to Austin, where he will be released. Press told us that Moreno is 63 years old and in poor health. He said he has repeatedly asked staff at TDCJ for an assessment of Moreno’s medical needs, but has received incomplete information. As for A.M., the D.A.’s Office said she told Judge Mueller at the July 10 hearing that her life has changed with the birth of her first daughter, that she is happy and just wants to live a guilt-free life. She also hopes to cultivate a relationship with her father.
This article appears in December 26 • 2025.