Melissa Lucio was sentenced to death in 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah.
She is the only Latina on Texas death row, and her execution is scheduled for April 27, but her family is fighting the clock to prevent it.
"My daughter is innocent," said her mother, Esperanza, who, along with other relatives and supported by the organization Death Penalty Action, pressured the Cameron County prosecutor, Luis Sáenz, to stop her execution.
"She doesn't deserve to die.
She deserves all her life,” she implored.
Abraham J. Bonowitz, director of Death Penalty Action, assured that they delivered some 30,000 signatures asking the prosecutor to see the documentary
The State of Texas vs.
Melissa
to verify that there is no evidence that Lucio killed her daughter, so she should not have been sentenced to die.
“Watch the movie!” protesters chanted outside the prosecutor's office.
[This Latino prisoner should be executed but he has a last wish that Texas does not want to fulfill]
"All we ask is that if you have not seen the movie, please watch it, and you will see that she is innocent," insisted Sonia Valencia Álvarez, Lucio's sister.
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For his part, the prosecutor said in a statement: "The time has come to comply with the sentence legally imposed by the jury and obtain justice for Mariah."
The Cameron County judge set this month the date on which Lucio will receive the lethal injection.
Lucio, a mother of 14 children, has appealed the case six times, and a new appeal is still pending before the Supreme Court.
A case full of irregularities
When paramedics arrived in 2007 at the apartment Lucio shared with his partner, Robert Alvarez, and nine of their children in the Rio Grande Valley, they found Mariah lying on her back on the floor.
She had fallen down the stairs, her mother alleged.
She was not breathing and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
The doctor found that she had a broken arm, bruises and a serious head injury.
That same night, the Texas Rangers launched a homicide investigation.
[Execution of woman sentenced to death for killing a mother and stealing her baby halted]
The father of the minor, who claimed not to know what happened to the girl, was sentenced to four years in prison for reckless injuries;
her mother was sentenced to die.
She is the only Latina and one of five women on death row in this state.
If the execution is allowed, it will be the first time a woman has been executed in Texas since 2014.
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The Cameron County coroner attributed her death to head trauma and said that was consistent with a case of child abuse and not a fall down the stairs.
However, Lucio's lawyers have said that the woman never hit any of her children.
According to the information contained in her appeals, they repeatedly denied that she harmed them.
But neither testified at trial.
[This murderer was sentenced to death three times but three times avoided execution. He now he already knows the day he must die]
The documentary
The State of Texas vs.
Melissa,
directed by Sabrina van Tassel, seeks to show Lucio's innocence.
“There is no proof of any kind.
There is a woman on death row and not a single person has seen her hit her daughter.
The only thing they have is what they call a confession,” the Franco-American director and journalist, who worked on the documentary for three years, told the Efe news agency.
“Melissa Lucio faces imminent execution for a capital murder she never committed,” one of her attorneys, Tivon Schardl, told the Texas Observer.
“Melissa, an innocent woman, faces execution in less than 100 days because a corrupt prosecutor relied on a coerced statement by an overzealous Texas Ranger who harassed a traumatized woman into making a false confession,” he added. .
[A mentally disabled prisoner is executed in Alabama with the approval of the Supreme Court]
According to the documentary, Lucio may have pleaded guilty to protect his teenage daughter who was with her little sister when he fell, but this information was never presented in court.
Two defense experts were also not allowed to testify about how Lucio was sexually abused as a child and mistreated by a former husband, experiences that could explain her submissive character.
In August 2021, several former prosecutors and anti-GBV organizations urged the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the judge's order to exclude expert testimony on the effects of trauma had deprived the woman of showing His innocence
Armando Villalobos, the former Cameron County elected district attorney who secured the death penalty against Lucio, was convicted of bribery and extortion in 2014 for accepting more than $100,000 in bribes to settle cases and is serving a 14-year sentence in a federal prison.
With information from the
Texas Observer
and
Efe
.
