Melissa Lucio could become the first Latina executed in Texas.
Her defense has just launched the last great attempt to avoid that fate before April 27, the date when the death penalty would be carried out.
His attorneys filed a clemency petition Tuesday with the state's Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
They are asking for the sentence to be commuted or for the authorities to allow them to extend the deadline for 120 days to present new evidence.
Lucio has been charged since 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez, who died a year earlier.
She is one of only seven women on death row in Texas, and the only Latina.
The lawyers indicate that the conviction is unfair.
They argue that Lucio has
suffered sexual abuse and domestic violence
for almost his entire life and that this allowed the alleged confession in the case — he said "I guess it was me" — to be obtained by the police with mistreatment.
According to Axios, this is because people who suffer from domestic violence for a long time
tend to assume the blame of others
as a defense mechanism.
Melissa Lucio in prison on March 21, 2022 Courtesy of The Innocence Project
Her history "made her especially vulnerable to coercive interrogation tactics" because trauma makes such people docile, easily influenced, Vanessa Potkin, director of special case litigation at The Innocence Project, which exonerates people, told a news conference. who they believe were unjustly sentenced.
The request from Lucio's legal team includes testimony from seven experts who indicate that the statements that the woman gave to the police after being interrogated for five hours in a row were "mere repetitions of data and words that the officers were giving her" and therefore should not be considered a confession, the team said in a press release.
In the five-hour interrogation, Lucio claimed to be innocent more than 100 times before saying what was taken as a confession, according to the defense.
Mariah Alvarez's death was a tragedy, not a murder."
Sandra Babcock, attorney
The attorneys also say that
false medical evidence was presented
during the trial that led the jury to believe that Lucio was aggressive against her daughter, Mariah.
The girl had a condition that caused her to have some trouble walking, taking falls with some regularity both at home and at her daycare that caused bruises, according to the defense.
In the clemency document filed this week, attorneys included texts written by four jurors from the original trial saying they were not presented with evidence that they now believe might have changed their guilty plea.
The defense claims that the girl's death was accidental when she fell down some stairs outside the apartment where the family was moving in February 2007.
[Melissa Lucio's defense asks to see a movie that they say proves her innocence]
Melissa Lucio with her daughters Mariah and AdrianaCourtesy of the Lucio family / via The Innocence Project
In 2019 the case against Lucio was to be reopened for a new trial.
But that decision was reversed by an appeals court.
Last year, the US Supreme Court
refused to review the case
.
An official document from the Texas Attorney General's Office submitted for court deliberation noted that Mariah's autopsy found "blunt force trauma to the head."
“Mariah Alvarez's death was a tragedy, not a murder.
His brothers and sisters have suffered the anguish of having lost their sister and they ask the state of Texas not to worsen their pain with the execution of their mother," Sandra Babcock, one of Lucio's lawyers and director of the Copper Center, told Axios. Cornell University Death Penalty.
Lucio's team said the Board of Pardons doesn't usually conduct clemency reviews, but they hope
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will step
in to allow them to show the evidence.
This news was first published in the Axios Latino newsletter, Axios' collaboration with Noticias Telemundo. You can subscribe by
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