The lawyers of a woman who is to be executed in a month in Texas asked the authorities of this American state on Tuesday to grant a reprieve to their client, according to them the victim of a prosecution investigation and a botched trial.
Melissa Lucio, a 53-year-old Mexican-American, was found guilty in 2008 of the death of Mariah, her two-year-old daughter, who died the previous year after falling down the stairs.
She is due to be executed April 27 at Huntsville Penitentiary.
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As the deadline nears, his lawyers have asked the Texas Clemency Board and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to commute his sentence or stay his execution for 120 days to allow him time to present "
facts ."
crucial
" which, in their view, justify the organization of a new trial.
“
We are asking to allow Melissa to gather the evidence of her innocence and present it before a court which can decide if she has the right to a new trial
”, declared during a press conference Tivon Schardl, one of his lawyers.
More than 100 denials
For her defenders, Melissa Lucio was presumed guilty by the police who questioned her bluntly for five hours and despite her more than 100 denials.
“
Those who interrogated him accepted nothing other than his admission of having caused the death of his daughter
,” assured Vanessa Potkin, of the organization “
The Innocence Project
”, which fights against miscarriages of justice.
"
Melissa was under constant pressure and manipulated to the extreme
" as she was "
particularly vulnerable to coerced interrogation methods due to her past abuse and trauma
," it said. she explains.
A mother of 12 children at the age of 37, she had suffered sexual assault from her early childhood and had been beaten and raped by her two successive husbands.
She had fallen into decay and drugs, losing custody of her children for a time, before taking her life back in hand.
At the time of Mariah's death, she was moving into a new apartment after leaving her second husband.
During her trial, argue her defenders, her then lawyer "
presented only the bare minimum
" of the abuse suffered by the young woman and the medical experts did not take into account the girl's medical history, which suffered from several handicaps likely to explain his fall.
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The lawyers also rely on “
thousands of documents
” from child protection services in which there are “
no accusations of violence on the part of his children
”, underlined Vanessa Potkin.
The clemency commission is expected to issue its decision just days before the execution date.
