Melissa Lucio, who has suffered a lifetime of abuse from family members and partners, has been on death row in rural Texas since 2008 accused of killing her two-year-old daughter, a crime she says never committed.
A few days before her execution scheduled for the end of April, this 53-year-old Latin mother of Mexican origin thinks only of the suffering of her little ones.
"Of course I'm afraid," Lucio said in an interview with the EFE agency from prison.
“
But I am afraid for my children, because no one is going to be there to support
them”, he pointed out.
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 prosecution argued at trial that the woman beat her daughter to death, while she claimed that the little girl, who had malformed legs, fell down the long, old staircase of her house in the town of Harlingen in a careless moment, while organizing a move to another residence.
[One last try: Lawyers ask for clemency to prevent Melissa Lucio from being the first Latina executed in Texas]
The American of Mexican origin sentenced to death, Melissa Lucio, poses for Efe behind a glass screen and surrounded by bars, during an interview held on March 29 at the Mountain View prison in Gatesville, Texas. Jorge Fuentelsaz / EFE
Lucio believes that her position as a Latina and her social status affected her death sentence.
“If I had been a different race, someone with money, with a high school degree or a career, I think the jury would have seen things very differently,” he said in the interview from the Mountain View jail, after a glass screen and surrounded by bars.
If I had been of another race, someone with money, with a degree, I think the jury would have seen me in a very different way."
Melissa lucio latin mother sentenced to death
His case has attracted the attention of numerous organizations, experts and legislators, who insist that the authorities are about to execute by lethal injection a Latina mother who is innocent of killing her two-year-old daughter, who died in an accident.
Melissa says that right after Mariah's death, police aggressively questioned her for hours without lawyers present until, exhausted, she decided to tell them what “they wanted to hear”.
"But I didn't
," she repeats.
Little Mariah died as a result of a head contusion, which the authorities attributed to ill-treatment, and which Melisssa alleges was the result of her fall, a version that is now supported by several forensic experts.
His 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.
They filed a clemency petition Tuesday with the state Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
While on Thursday, the 81 members of the state House of Representatives - both Republicans and Democrats - addressed a letter to the board asking to review the case.
“Today I have more hope than I had in the past.
I have more hope and more faith,” the son of the accused woman, John Lucio, told Noticias Telemundo.
A childhood and a difficult life
“I had a very tough childhood.
I suffered many traumas because I was sexually abused.
I witnessed a lot of violence between my mother and my stepfather," Melissa Lucio told EFE.
Seeing the mistreatment her mother suffered, she always had a hard time “trusting men”.
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Lucio got married and found that her husband also began to violate her.
“I couldn't believe the cycle was repeating itself,”
she says.
Lucio tried for years to have a better relationship with her husband and talk to him, but that didn't work.
The woman was a single mother of twelve children, and she assures that she was "loving, patient, understanding", something that her children have also repeated.
Lucio's clemency petition also includes letters from four jurors stating that they have changed their minds, and that if they had heard their children speak of their mother as a loving person, for example, they would not have sentenced her to death, and who believe he deserves a new trial.
A "forced" confession
The night Mariah died, the Latina mother says she felt pressured by the authorities.
“They were trying to get me to confess that I had abused Mariah all the time,” she says.
Her lawyers have also argued that Melissa's conviction is the result of a biased view of the police from the first minute of their investigation, which later led to officers aggressively questioning her for five hours and without the presence of a lawyer, which led to a false confession.
“
I felt very intimidated, they were very aggressive with me
,” says Melissa.
"I was really scared that night, and finally there came a point where I said 'maybe if I tell you what you want to hear, you'll leave me alone,'" she adds.
“But I didn't!” she immediately clarifies, her voice cracking.
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“They were too quick to judge.
The police formed an opinion about what happened almost immediately,” the director of special litigation for the Innocence Project, Vanessa Potkin, another of the defendant's representatives, explained to Efe.
The lawyers maintain that even the forensic doctor did not study another possibility of death other than that of a beating.
[A mentally disabled prisoner is executed in Alabama with the approval of the Supreme Court]
Melissa feels that her background influenced how her case was handled.
“
Latinos are considered inferior
, and so are African-Americans.
They see us as ignorant people, especially me, because I didn't finish high school,” she says.
“My children are my world”
Melissa says that she is afraid for her children, for her future, in case she dies, although she knows and is grateful that family and friends have offered her support.
Ever thought of giving up.
"But the only thing that has continued to give me strength is my children," she remarks.
"My children are my world."
Melissa Lucio with her daughters Mariah and Adriana. Courtesy of the Lucio family / via The Innocence Project
From prison to freedom
The maximum security prison where Melissa Lucio is being held is surrounded by two rows of tall fences crowned with imposing barbed wire, because it is the only prison in the state of Texas where women on death row remain, who are currently only six.
Lucio was in a work program inside the prison for which after getting up early, he worked in a garden in the patio, where spices and vegetables were grown.
“It became therapeutic for me, just being out there in the sun, smelling the breeze, seeing birds and cars,” he says.
But since she is on death row, she has been removed from the group.
[Mother Whose Stillborn Son Has Prison Sentence Overturned in California But Will Now Stand Trial for Murder]
Melissa Lucio was convicted in 2008 and is in a maximum security prison.
Jorge Fuentelsaz / EFE
Still, the Latina mom feels free.
“I am a very different person than I was before.
For many years she was closed in on herself, she was a prisoner of my own body, ”she recounts.
Now she found a way out in religion.
“God has been putting all the pieces together, and now there is only one more piece left.
That piece can set me free and let me go home to my children, or go home to heaven and be with God,” she said.
If she does get out of jail, Melissa says she would make “a feast,” a meal of tortillas, rice, fried chicken, beans, salad, guacamole and more.
“
I would go find all my children and hug them and give them kisses and spend as much time as possible with them
.
And then make a huge meal and try to give them that mother they haven't had for the last 15 years,” she said.
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