The Texas Longhorns continue to do everything they can to better their team for the future, including dominating on the recruiting trail with some of the most sought-after prospects in the country.

Their latest installment comes after extending offers to offensive lineman Ty McCurry and Jayden Thompson, while also leaving a favorable impression on premier recruit Brayson Robinson.

As they continue to make a push for another top-10 class under head coach Steve Sarkisian, the Longhorns made a staunch impression on three of their top targets for the 2028 cycle.

Forty Acres Stands Out

The Longhorns continue to make a push on the recruiting trail, hosting some premier targets on the first day of spring camp, and extending offers to McCurry and Thompson. Both players were impressed with what they saw, not just on the football field, either, but from the Forty Acres as well.

“They said I’m their top guy and that they want me back out for a visit soon. “McCurry tells me of his conversations with the Longhorns before continuing on where they stand in his rankings. “I’ve loved the past two times I’ve been in Austin to check out the Longhorns and can 100 percent see them being a contender in my commitment down the line.”

McCurry was a Sports Illustrated freshman All-American and currently stands at 6-foot-6 and 270 pounds, currently holding 11 offers with many of them coming from the Lone Star State. The other offer from the first day of practice went to Jayden Thompson, number 15-ranked offensive tackle in the 2028 class according to 247Sports.

“My conversations with the coaches went very well, they were all very inviting and helpful,” Thompson told Texas Longhorns On SI of the Longhorns staff. “If I had one takeaway, it would be the tour of not just the football part of the school, but the campus as well.”

Another target for the 2028 cycle is Brayson Robinson, an edge defender out of Mavel, Texas. While he didn’t receive an offer yet, he has quickly garnered interest with some of the top programs in the country. The Arizona State Sun Devils and Alabama Crimson Tide have been on him mainly, but he’s hearing from a lot of schools, including the Longhorns, who impressed him.

“It went amazing and I like how every coach introduced themselves to my family and me,” Robinson told Texas Longhorns On SI about his visit. “I also love the culture.”

With still a while to go until the 2028 cycle becomes the forefront on the recruiting trail, Sarkisian and his staff continue to set themselves up to be at the top of the conversations regarding the premier talent on their target board.

So far this month, Austin’s main weather observation site at Camp Mabry has recorded 0.7 inch of rain, but the year overall has been dry. Since Jan. 1, we’ve recorded just over 2.5 inches of rainfall, which is about 2.75 inches below normal at this point in the year.

While the weekend rain wasn’t exactly a drought-buster, we can still keep our hopes high — or, in the words of a classic infomercial: “But wait … there’s more!” 

Morning: We’ll wake early Tuesday under dark and cloudy skies, as the sun doesn’t rise in Austin until 7:46 a.m. because of daylight saving time. Temperatures will be near 70 degrees, but don’t expect the same foggy start we saw Monday. Winds will be a bit gusty out of the south, which will help keep the low-level moisture mixed and prevent it from settling in and creating a layer of fog. 

Midday: Sprinkles or light showers are possible through midday, but the heavier rainfall will hold off during the morning. The upper-level low pressure system approaching from the west will help produce active weather across West Texas during the first half of Tuesday. 

Afternoon: However, across Central Texas an atmospheric lid, known as a capping inversion, will remain in place until surface temperatures warm up enough for rising air to break through the “cap.” Once that happens, the atmosphere will gradually destabilize through the afternoon and evening, allowing rain and thunderstorms to develop.

Breezy south winds will continue throughout the day, with gusts up to 25 mph. Afternoon temperatures are expected to climb into the upper 70s and lower 80s.

Once the cold front transits east of Austin on Wednesday, drier and cooler weather will settle in for the rest of the work week before 80-degree afternoon temperatures reemerge next weekend.

(Austin, TX – March 9, 2026) Carmen Mejia was exonerated today after Travis County District Court Judge P. David Wahlberg dismissed a 2003 murder charge against her, following a ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) — the state’s highest criminal court — overturning her convictions and finding that new evidence established that Ms. Mejia is “actually innocent.” 

The CCA’s decision, on Jan. 22, 2026, found Ms. Mejia actually innocent of the death of a 10-month-old infant in her care who was critically burned from scalding bathwater due to a water heater in her rental home that lacked safety technology. Ms. Mejia has spent the last 22 years in prison for what the State claimed to be murder but now agrees was, in fact, a tragic accident.

“While we are overjoyed that the courts finally recognize that Ms. Mejia is innocent, this grave injustice should have never happened in the first place,” said Vanessa Potkin, Ms. Mejia’s Innocence Project attorney. “Ms. Mejia is a woman of immeasurable strength, who has relied on her deep faith to withstand a traumatic period of her life that most people wouldn’t be able to survive. Her case is far from isolated. There is a clear pattern in our criminal legal system of wrongly accusing caregivers when a child in their care dies from an accident or illness, particularly when those caregivers are women of color. We have seen too many cases like Ms. Mejia’s where false and outdated medical testimony lead to wrongful convictions, and there are undoubtedly thousands more people still wrongly imprisoned because of such testimony.”

“Ms. Mejia, today we acknowledge that our office failed you,” said Sarah Byrom, Assistant District Attorney, Travis County District Attorney’s Office. “The State pursued and obtained a conviction against you for what we now understand was a tragic accident and that failure cost you over 20 years of your life. 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.”

A Tragic Accident and Lost Evidence

On July 28, 2003, Ms. Mejia was at home with her four children and babysitting a 10-month-old when the fatal accident occurred. While Ms. Mejia was nursing her youngest child, her eldest daughter tried to bathe the baby. The water heater in Ms. Mejia’s rental home lacked the now-standard safety features, allowing the tub water to quickly reach 147.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Within seconds of being exposed to this high water temperature, the baby suffered third-degree burns. He died in the hospital later that day as a result of complications from the burn injuries.

Instead of recognizing this as the terrible accident it was, police arrested Ms. Mejia for murder. 

A combination of factors — in particular, invalid medical testimony and lost evidence supporting Ms. Mejia’s account of the accident — contributed to her wrongful conviction. No medical burn expert was called to testify at trial. Instead, the prosecution’s experts — a medical doctor and retired law enforcement investigator — incorrectly asserted that the baby’s injuries could only have been caused by an adult intentionally holding the child down in scalding water.

As part of their investigation, forensic interviews were conducted with Ms. Mejia’s children after the incident. The children’s statements, which were video recorded, supported Ms. Mejia’s account that this was an accident. However, the recordings disappeared from law enforcement’s custody before the trial, as a result, the jury never heard these corroborating accounts.

At trial, the State presented no evidence of prior mistreatment or violence. Ms. Mejia had no criminal history. 

Ms. Mejia steadfastly maintained her innocence, including during her testimony at trial. Nonetheless, the jury returned a guilty verdict, convicting her of murder and injury to a child. She was sentenced to life in prison, lost her parental rights, and did not see her four children again for over two decades.

“In this case from the start, the worst was assumed: That this was an intentional act,” said Collin Bellair, Assistant District Attorney, Travis County District Attorney’s Office, at today’s hearing. “We could not have been more wrong, and it turned a tragic accident into a wrongful conviction.”

A Conviction Collapses Under Faulty Science

One significant person who believed in Ms. Mejia’s innocence during her trial was Art Guerrero, the courtroom bailiff. Ms. Mejia’s testimony and her vehement declarations of innocence stayed with Mr. Guerrero years after her conviction, so much so that he contacted the Innocence Project, the District Attorney’s Office, and another judge, urging a reexamination of Ms. Mejia’s case.

“From the time that you were taken from this place to prison, you were not forgotten … you were not forgotten. There was somebody thinking about you the whole time and just trying to figure out what to do and how to do it,” Mr. Guerrero said, addressing Ms. Mejia at her exoneration hearing.

After the Innocence Project took up Ms. Mejia’s case in 2021, the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office also agreed to investigate her innocence claim. During the reinvestigation, they located Ms. Mejia’s children, who had been adopted in a closed adoption and had spent the past two decades wondering what happened to their birth mother, even hiring a private investigator to no success.

In 2024, the Innocence Project filed a writ of habeas corpus in Travis County District Court, challenging Ms. Mejia’s wrongful conviction. Over the course of a year, Judge Wahlberg conducted hearings at which multiple experts presented evidence that — contrary to what the State’ presented at trial — the child’s injuries were consistent with an accidental scalding.

Wendy Shields, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy — whose decades of research have focused on preventing injuries in the home with particular expertise in scald burns — testified in 2024 that the water heater in Ms. Mejia’s rental home lacked recommended plumbing safety features designed to prevent scald injuries. She explained that this situation is common in homes built prior to the 1980s, like Ms. Mejia’s, before building safety codes were revised to require tap-level protections against scalding. 

“Burn injuries remain a leading cause of accidental injury and death among children. My research estimates that approximately 6,500 children experience tap-water scald burns each year in the United States. Between 2013 and 2022, there were approximately 1,600 tap-water scald injuries involving children under age 18 in incidents where another child was involved,” Dr. Shield said today.

“The technology to prevent these injuries already exists. Devices such as thermostatic mixing valves and other temperature-limiting plumbing protections can dramatically reduce the risk of tap-water scald burns. However, these protections are not consistently required in older housing, leaving many families without basic safeguards. This is particularly concerning for renters, who often do not control the maintenance or temperature settings of the water heater in their homes,” Dr. Shield added.

In 2024, Dr. James Gallagher, a burn surgeon and former director of the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center — one of the nation’s leading trauma burn centers — testified that the tub’s incredibly hot water could have caused accidental burn injuries “in a matter of seconds.” He found that “there is no medical evidence to support that this child’s injuries had to be the result of an intentional act by an adult,” directly refuting the 2003 trial testimony of the State’s experts.

One of Ms. Mejia’s daughters, now an adult who missed out on growing up with her mother, also testified about her recollections of the accident, including turning on the water. 

At Ms. Mejia’s 2003 trial, the State’s medical examiner testified that the death was a homicide based on the available evidence at the time. Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, who performed the autopsy, reversed the manner of death determination from homicide to accidental in 2025 and testified that she would have “ruled this an accident,” if she’d had all of the information now available. When asked during post-conviction proceedings why she decided to take this step, Dr. Peacock responded with great clarity, because “it’s the right thing to do.”  

As a result of the new evidence presented in these hearings, the State’s key experts recanted their testimony supporting the prosecution’s theory that an adult had to have intentionally caused the burns. Judge Wahlberg found that no crime took place and subsequently, the CCA ruled that Ms. Mejia had established her innocence and overturned her conviction.

In dismissing the case based on her “actual innocence,” Judge Wahlberg told Ms. Mejia, “There’s nothing that I can say at this point that will bring back those 23 years. Signing this piece of paper won’t bring it back. There is no amount of money that will ever compensate you for losing the best years of your life. I wish I had that power. What I can do is say to you that there is a reason to hope and believe that your future will be better every day from now on, and I pray that it is so.”