For more than 20 years, Marshall Moreno sat in a Texas prison as a convicted child rapist. Now, after the daughter who helped put him there has recanted, courts have declared him actually innocent, and Travis County prosecutors have dropped the case.
Moreno, convicted in 2003 of sexually assaulting his daughter, was sent away for 36 years on a case that prosecutors now say rested almost entirely on the testimony of a single child witness who later said she was not telling the truth. That reversal prompted a rare judicial finding of actual innocence and led the Travis County District Attorney to dismiss the prosecution altogether.
According to a press release from the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, its Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed the case and asked a judge to formally declare Moreno actually innocent, then moved to dismiss the charges. The office said the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted relief on Nov. 20, 2025, and prosecutors dismissed the case on Dec. 18, 2025.
How the original case unfolded
Moreno’s legal nightmare began in 2002, when his daughter made an outcry to a therapist and later took the stand at age 12, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. At trial, jurors heard from the therapist and a medical doctor about that outcry.
What investigators did not find, according to the registry, was meaningful physical or forensic evidence to back up the allegation. Even so, a Travis County jury convicted Moreno in July 2003, and a judge sentenced him to 36 years in prison.
Recantation and review
Years later, the woman who had testified against Moreno as a child reached out for help. In 2020, she contacted the University of Texas Actual Innocence Clinic and later signed an affidavit recanting her earlier statements, FOX 7 Austin reported.
Moreno’s attorneys filed a habeas petition in November 2024. At a post‑conviction hearing in July 2025, the witness again recanted, this time on the record in open court. After that hearing, judges concluded that the new testimony established Moreno’s actual innocence.
Why judges accepted the recantation
Both the district court judge and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found the recantation credible and determined that Moreno’s earlier conviction relied on false testimony, the Austin Chronicle reported. The Chronicle noted that the review was led by the Conviction Integrity Unit, which District Attorney José Garza created in 2021, and that the unit recommended seeking a declaration of actual innocence.
“We have put in new processes here and now to make sure that our prosecutors aren't securing convictions of people who are actually innocent,” Garza said, according to FOX 7 Austin. In its press release, the Travis County DA’s office added that, while dismissal cannot return the decades Moreno lost, officials hope the decision will help him rebuild his life and that stronger review procedures will reduce the risk of similar errors in the future.
What comes next
Now that the courts have cleared him, Moreno may be eligible for compensation under Texas’s Tim Cole Act, a statute designed to compensate people who were wrongfully convicted. The law, however, comes with strict filing deadlines and documentary requirements and is administered by the state comptroller, according to the legislative text.
Under that statute, claimants typically must file within three years of receiving relief and submit verified court orders and other records showing they meet the law’s requirements for compensation, the bill text and analysis explain.
The case highlights how a conviction built largely on a single childhood outcry can fall apart decades later and why conviction‑integrity work has become such a flashpoint in Austin’s criminal justice system, the National Registry of Exonerations notes. Moreno’s release and the rulings that cleared him leave lingering questions about how prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges handle delayed allegations and how Travis County will try to prevent the next wrongful conviction from stretching on for a quarter century.
