Texas mom Melissa Lucio asks criminal appeals court to spare her life

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Attorneys for the Texas mom who is facing death for the 2007 accidental death of her toddler have made an urgent plea to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop her execution, set for April 27. Innocence Project said the filing on Friday is the first time a court will see ”new scientific and expert evidence showing that Melissa’s conviction was based on an unreliable, coerced ‘confession’ and unscientific false evidence that misled the jury.”

It may also be the last time a court is able to intervene in her execution, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case last fall.

Innocence Project said the petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals “details how the police investigation and prosecution were infected by gender bias,” using interrogation tactics “that replicated the dynamics of domestic violence” in order to get her to confess to a crime she didn’t commit. Lucio, a childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivor, was berated for hours by detectives on the night of her daughter’s death. Prosecutors then used a coerced statement against her in court.

The petition notes a technique where police, “intentionally or unintentionally, often ‘prompt the suspect’ on how they believed the crime happened, thereby allowing an innocent suspect without any knowledge of the crime to ‘parrot back an accurate-sounding narrative.’”

Like previously noted, one of the jurors who has since expressed remorse over sentencing Lucio to death has said that he was never told her history as a sexual and domestic abuse survivor made her particularly vulnerable to interrogation tactics, “or how she repeated the same words the interrogators fed to her.” Johnny Galvan Jr. wrote last month that “no evidence was presented of that and it would have mattered to me.”

“’New linguistic analysis shows that while the police treated Melissa as a suspect, they treated her partner like an innocent victim—even though he was also Mariah’s caretaker, and had a history of intra-familial violence. He is now a free man,’ said Professor Sandra Babcock, Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, and one of Ms. Lucio’s attorneys,” Innocence Project continued.

Support for halting Lucio’s execution has also won backing from of a majority of the Texas House of Representatives, which has urged Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant her clemency or a reprieve.

Lucio’s advocates have also pleaded to Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, who has power to stop the execution. KHOU reported that Saenz gave conflicting statements during a “combative” hearing last week, after first defending the process that sentenced Lucio, then saying that if she “does not get a stay by a certain day,” he would “do what I have to do and stop it.”

“Because of Saenz’s conflicting statements, and without any court motions or rulings, it’s still not certain Lucio’s execution will be stopped,” KHOU said. Armando Villalobos, the Cameron County district attorney who charged Lucio, was himself sentenced to prison on charges of bribery and extortion, further adding to the doubt around Lucio’s case.

“If the jury had heard evidence about the coercive tactics used in Melissa’s interrogation and the medical evidence showing that Mariah’s cause of death was consistent with an accident, they would have found there was no murder, Melissa would have been acquitted, and she would be preparing for Easter mass with her children, not facing execution,” said Innocence Project Director of Special Litigation Vanessa Potkin. “She deserves a new trial.

“Melissa’s children are also urging the Governor and the Board not to execute their mother,” Innocence Project said. “They are Mariah’s brothers and sisters and Texas law requires that their wishes be taken into account.”

There are a number of steps you can take right now to help spare Melissa Lucio’s life. You can click here to send a Daily Kos petition to Gov. Abbott, as well as clicking here to sign Innocence Project’s petition. You can also call 956-446-2866 and leave a message urging the governor to prevent an irreversible injustice.