Melissa Lucio’s lawyers ask for her death sentence to be suspended (PHOTOS)

• The first Hispanic woman to receive a death sentence in Texas has her days numbered.
• Melissa Lucio is running out of time to be saved.
• The woman is accused of killing her two-year-old daughter.

The case of Melissa Lucio, the first Hispanic woman to receive a death sentence in Texas after being accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter, may take an unexpected turn. Lucio’s lawyers filed a clemency petition in court on Tuesday seeking to suspend her execution.

Melissa Lucio was sentenced to death in 2008 and April 27 is the date when she will be executed after having been convicted of murdering her two-year-old daughter. The case has been very controversial due to the drastic sentence given for a situation that still raises more questions than answers.

Melissa Lucio received a death sentence in 2008

According to NBC News, the petition from Melissa Lucio’s legal team was presented on Tuesday before the Texas Council of Pardons and Parole, as well as before the state governor, Greg Abbott. It is filled with expert statements coming from forensic doctors and scientists.

Melissa Lucio was victimized all her life by various people and she suffered sexual and physical abuse. In the clemency petition it is alleged that the death sentence that she received was based on an unreliable confession and false evidence.

Melissa Lucio case had many irregularities?

Sandra Babcock, director of the Center for the Death Penalty in the World at Cornell University, who is also part of Melissa Lucio’s defense team, affirmed that she was sentenced in a flawed process. She added that it was contaminated by false evidence, invalid testimonies, as well as discrimination.

Melissa Lucio is Mexican and a naturalized American. She is 53 years old, and faces the death penalty for apparently beating her daughter Mariah to death, in February 2007, when she was two years old. However, the version of the accused very different from what the authorities determined happened

What really happened to Melissa Lucio’s daughter?

When it was determined by the authorities that Melissa Lucio was apparently the one who had caused the death of the little girl, Lucio explained that her daughter Mariah had a condition that made it impossible for her to walk properly. She said she’d been that way ever since she was born and Lucio alleged that she fell down the stairs.

Lucio’s two-year-old daughter fell down a long, steep staircase that was apparently in the house she was moving into in February 2007. Two days later, Mariah died in her sleep after she had no appetite and showed signs of fatigue….

Is Melissa Lucio telling the truth about what happened to her daughter?

The authorities called the version that Melissa Lucio gave them when they arrived at the house a «lie.» This was because apparently there were only two steps to access the home and the woman did not say that the girl had fallen from a long staircase inside the house. In addition, the girl’s injuries were significant.

Given this situation, things got complicated for Lucio, who ultimately received the death sentence in 2008. The director of special litigation for the Innocence Project, Vanessa Potkin, said that this misunderstanding at the time of the incident caused the investigation of the case to be riddled with errors, turning everything against Melissa Lucio.

The harsh interrogation of Melissa Lucio

Another fundamental aspect that is noted in the clemency petition is that two hours after the death of her little daughter, Melissa Lucio was subjected to an aggressive interrogation by the authorities. At that time she said more than 100 times that she was not to blame for her daughter’s death.

Faced with such insistence from the police who tried to intimidate her for more than five hours, Melissa Lucio ended up confessing that she was responsible for Mariah’s death. Her lawyers are saying the confession was coerced. Forensic interviewer David Thompson said outdated interrogation tactics increase the risk of false confessions.

Evidence of her daughter having been abused?

In addition, in the clemency petition for Melissa Lucio, it is stated that the forensic doctors examined the body of the two-year-old girl and, based on the woman’s information, they stated that everything they saw on the body was evidence of abuse.

Given the above, experts support the conclusion that Mariah could have suffered «disseminated intravascular coagulation» which causes bruises to appear throughout the body as a result of a head injury that Melissa Lucio’s little daughter could have suffered when she fell down the stairs.

Will her life be spared?

The document that could save Melissa Lucio’s life, just a month before her execution in Texas, includes statements from members of the jury at her trial which was carried out 14 years ago, in 2008. Upon hearing new evidence presented, the jurors argued that they should have a new trial for the woman and spare her life.

April 27, 2022, is the date Melissa Lucio’s death sentence is to be carried out by order of the Texas authorities. For several years, almost 400 civil organizations in the state and the country in general have advocated for her and her innocence after the harsh sentence.

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