close
close

The execution of Melissa Lucio in Texas has been stopped. Your case is powerful.

While I believe Texas should continue to maintain the death penalty, it should be used with extreme caution.

play

Imagine spending 16 years on death row for a crime a judge now says you may not have committed, but just two days before your execution date, you are told you will not face the death penalty in Texas.

At least not yet.

This happened to Melissa Lucio, mother of 14 children. If her death penalty is carried out, Lucio will be the first Latina to be executed in the modern era of capital punishment in Texas.

Her story has the makings of a spooky TV crime thriller, except it's real and hasn't ended yet.

There is a forced confession, flawed forensics, suppressed evidence, and a murder conviction followed by a set execution date. With time running out, friends, family and eventually lawmakers intervened, appealing to the state to grant Lucio clemency.

Last month, two years after her execution was stayed, Judge Arturo Nelson, who presided over Lucio's original trial, recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals overturn Lucio's conviction and death sentence. She is awaiting a final decision from the only panel that can overturn a criminal conviction in Texas.

Incredibly, Lucio's execution was stayed in part due to lobbying by Texas Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican who supports the death penalty. He joined bipartisan state lawmakers to save Lucio just before she was set to be executed. Her ordeal exposes flaws and biases in the criminal justice system and reignites the debate over the death penalty in Texas.

I tend to support the death penalty as a strong deterrent to violent crime, but this is exactly the kind of case that people who oppose the death penalty use to argue that it can be flawed.

“I guess I did it.” A confession that shouldn't have been.

Lucio's nightmare began shortly after Valentine's Day 2007. On February 15, Lucio's youngest child, two-year-old Mariah, fell down a steep staircase outside her apartment in Harlingen, South Texas. Even though Mariah had suffered quite a fall, Lucio did not immediately seek medical help, a decision that would later emerge as a result of the 16-year ordeal.

Two days later, Mariah didn't wake up from a nap. She was taken to hospital but could not be revived.

The district attorney later described in a lengthy statement that Mariah's body showed several signs of “severe beating,” such as bruises, bite marks, a broken arm, a crushed spinal cord and parts of her scalp missing hair.

Police investigators began to suspect that Mariah had died of child abuse, and Lucio was brought in for questioning just two hours after Mariah's death.

I represent wrongfully convicted women: The Texas courts spared Melissa Lucio's life. Now she can prove her innocence.

Although she denied beating her daughter to death more than 100 times, Lucio – pregnant with twins, tired and grieving – finally confessed after five hours: “I think I did it.”

Instead of interpreting Lucio's statement as an angry admission of guilt that her failure to seek medical attention after Mariah's fall led to her death, prosecutors characterized her words as a murder confession.

The fact that Lucio had already abused drugs and that investigations had been initiated against her by the youth welfare office further aggravated her fate and the investigators' perception of the overwhelmed, tired mother.

The trial in which evidence was excluded

During the trial, prosecutors focused on Lucio's confession and Mariah's injured body. Although several of Lucio's children who were interviewed said their mother was not abusive and at least one child saw Mariah fall down the stairs, confirming Lucio's claim, prosecutors concealed this from the defense at the time.

A pathologist, Dr. Norma Jean Farley, testified that the child's autopsy determined that he did not die from a fall down the stairs and that his injuries were consistent with death from blunt force trauma.

At trial, the defense attempted to present testimony from an experienced psychologist about how the conditions of the interrogation could lead to a false confession, but the court excluded this testimony.

A documentary about Lucio's case reports that Mariah's autopsy showed signs of disseminated intravascular coagulation, a blood disorder that can cause extreme bruising.

In 2008, Lucio was sentenced to death in Cameron County court for murder.

The circumstances surrounding Mariah's death, including Lucio's story and decision, made this mother all the more vulnerable to investigations and allegations of abuse. Lucio, a sexual abuse survivor, lived in poverty with her children for years, was occasionally homeless and abused drugs. Child protective services had been active in Lucio's life on and off and had removed the children at least once for neglect.

'Do you mean that seriously?' The message of hope turns Lucio's case around.

Lucio's lawyers from the Innocence Project unsuccessfully appealed her conviction several times. After the Texas Court of Appeals rejected Lucio's first appeal, she appealed to a higher court. In 2019, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Lucio had been deprived of her constitutional right to a fair defense.

This decision was short-lived. In 2021, the same court, now a larger panel of judges, overturned that decision and reinstated her conviction. The Supreme Court denied their request for review.

Lucio's execution date was set for April 27, 2022.

On March 22, her lawyers filed their clemency petition, which included a variety of expert reports refuting the prosecution's claim. Four jurors and Lucio's children petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency.

Over time, Lucio's case attracted the attention of lawmakers and even celebrities. In a March 25, 2022 letter, Leach, the Texas Republican, and other Republican and Democratic lawmakers filed an appeal, calling for Lucio's execution date to be postponed due to overwhelming evidence of her innocence.

Bipartisan lawmakers also urged Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz to intervene on Lucio's behalf during a hearing.

Two days before her execution, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Lucio's execution. In a three-page order, it granted Lucio a review of four questions: whether the state used false evidence to convict Lucio, whether the state withheld evidence favorable to Lucio's defense, and whether new scientific evidence the jury did not hear could have led to their acquittal and thus whether Lucio is actually innocent.

Rep. Leach called Lucio, who was still behind bars, to break the news that her execution had been stayed. “Do you mean that seriously?” She said. “This is wonderful. …Oh thank you, God.”

This is how partisan lawmakers can work together. Even in Texas.

Republicans in Texas are known for their strong center-right leanings. Party politics is as commonplace – and oppressive – as the July heat. Leach and other lawmakers deserve credit for their hard work in bringing Lucio's case to light. This result is an example of how sustained legislative pressure on a specific issue can make a real difference.

“I have long held that the system has failed Melissa Lucio – and her daughter Mariah – at every turn and that she should be given a new chance at justice … and a new chance at life,” Leach said last month in a post on X.

Lucio's lawyers and prosecutor Saenz released a rare joint statement saying that the parties filed a joint filing in 2023 that “acknowledged that Melissa's legal team did not have access to information relevant to her defense at the time of trial.” were beneficial.”

It is unusual for both sides of a criminal case to agree on injustice.

Hate Texas? Get over it. Why so many people are moving to the Lone Star State.

Lucio is not free yet. She is being held in a prison in Gatesville, but this is a step in the right direction.

The death penalty seems appropriate for certain crimes. This is not the case in cases where there are doubts about the evidence.

Lucio's story remains a tragic testament to how cautious lawmakers and the criminal justice system must be when it comes to sentencing, let alone the death penalty.

Without organizations like the Innocence Project and the persistent lobbying of Leach and other lawmakers, Lucio's story could have been even more tragic. It's hard to imagine a more unjust scenario than serving a sentence for a crime you didn't commit, but being executed on top of that seems unbearable to even think about.

This is also a cautionary tale about a whirlwind of factors that created a perfect storm of events that nearly led to an execution: racism, homelessness, abuse, poverty, police bias, and more. Lucio seems to have been abandoned by so many people and in so many places.

For many, the mere possibility of executing an innocent person may be reason enough to abolish the death penalty. While I believe the death penalty should be retained in Texas, it should be used with extreme caution. This case is exactly the reason why.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four children.

Tags:

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *