He Wasn’t Supposed to Work Her Trial. Now He’s Part of the Reason She’s Free.

On April 30, Art Guerrero received a congressional honor and recognition from U.S. Congressman Greg Casar, Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis for his role in Carmen Mejia’s exoneration. Ms. Mejia spent 

22 years in prison for a crime that she did not commit and Mr. Guerrero, who was the courtroom bailiff during her trial, spent the last decade urging a reinvestigation of her case. 

“It was very touching,” Mr. Guerrero told the Innocence Project after receiving the honor. “I did not expect anything from anyone or anywhere. But it was just a great honor especially from a U.S. congressman. That was one of the highest awards I could have received.”

Ms. Mejia was convicted of murder in 2005 after a 10-month-old she was babysitting was exposed to scalding tub water when one of Ms. Mejia’s children attempted to give the baby a bath. The baby later died from complications of his injuries. The tragic accident occurred because Ms. Mejia’s rental home’s water heater lacked standard safety features, allowing the tub water to rapidly reach 147.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ms. Mejia was found “actually innocent” and exonerated in a March hearing at which Mr. Guerrero also testified, but the pair officially met for the first time last Thursday.

At the award ceremony, Ms. Mejia told Mr. Guerrero that throughout her years in prison, she prayed constantly, not knowing who might hear her or if anyone was looking, but trusting that someone would come. That person turned out to be Mr. Guerrero.

“I felt like my heart could beat again. Having someone advocating for me all those years, I didn’t know but God knew,” Ms. Mejia said. 

That Mr. Guerrero came to be in the room at Ms. Mejia’s trial was an act of fate. The week that Ms. Mejia’s murder trial began, Mr. Guerrero had been assigned to a different courtroom entirely, but at the last minute a colleague asked Mr. Guerrero to cover a murder trial he’d been assigned to because he was heading out on a family vacation.

Mr. Guerrero was immediately troubled by the trial. The defense attorney representing Ms. Mejia was someone Guerrero had never, in all his years at the courthouse, seen conduct a trial. The second chair was a civil attorney, not a criminal one. Across from them sat, in Mr. Guerrero’s view, the most aggressive prosecutor in the office. “I saw something that went wrong inside that courtroom with that trial, and I saw it right away … I realized that no one else was going to step up and try to correct what went wrong,” he said.

For years after the trial, Mr. Guerrero said nothing for fear of losing his job. 

“[But] this thing kept eating me up. I kept thinking, if I don’t do anything, this lady is just going to sit there in prison for the rest of her life. Somebody needed to step up,” he said.

At the end of 2015, Mr. Guerrero retired. And for the first time, he felt free to try and help Ms. Mejia, whose story he’d never forgotten.

He had heard of the Innocence Project through a case that had come through his courthouse. He knew, as he put it, that if anyone had the kind of agency he was looking for, New York City would have it. So he called directory information, got a number, and dialed. That call set the wheels in motion, and both the Innocence Project and the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office reinvestigated her the case, leading to Ms. Mejia’s exoneration this year.

Ms. Mejia spent more than two decades behind bars, separated from her children and everything she knew — all while maintaining her innocence and her faith. She is free now, but the work of rebuilding a life doesn’t happen overnight.

“I just want to keep moving forward. I want to be happy,” said Ms. Mejia. “I want an opportunity to establish a relationship with my kids and get to the point where they call me mother.”