Melissa Lucio’s family asks that her death sentence be suspended

• Melissa Lucio is less than two months away from being executed in Texas for the death of her daughter.
• Some members of her family are calling for the execution to be stopped, claiming she is innocent.
• Two-year-old Mariah Álvarez was beaten to death, and authorities say her mother killed her.

Melissa Lucio waits in a cell in Texas for her death sentence, for the murder of her daughter, to be carried out. However, Melissa Lucio’s family is fighting for her execution to be suspended, as they say that the woman is innocent of the crime for which she was accused, tried, and convicted.

«They are going to kill her. She is not a murderer. She is not guilty. We are only asking you to see the film,» said Sonya Valencia Álvarez, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE. She is referring to the documentary State of Texas vs. Melissa (2020) by the filmmaker Sabrina Van Tassel, which shows irregularities in Melissa Lucio’s case.

Family asks that Melissa Lucio’s death sentence be suspended in Texas

Sonya Valencia Álvarez and other relatives, friends, and lawyers of Melissa Lucio gathered on Monday, February 7, 2022, outside the office of Luis A. Sáenz, District Attorney in Cameron County, Texas. They were there to analyze the Sabrina Van Tassel documentary and try to reopen the investigation of the case.

Melissa Lucio, 53, has been informed that her death sentence for the murder of her daughter will be carried out on April 27, 2022. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has informed Melissa Lucio that a judge has signed off on the execution date.

Melissa Lucio suffered domestic violence and sexual abuse as a child

Melissa Lucio will be the first woman to be executed in the Walls Unit prison in Huntsville, Texas, since the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. She received a lethal injection on February 3, 1998, for the murder of two people during a robbery in Houston.

Melissa Lucio was 38 years old when her little daughter, Mariah Álvarez, died. The woman cleaned houses and offices to support her 12 children. When Lucio was arrested in 2007 and accused of murder, she was pregnant with twins and had to give those babies up for adoption after giving birth in prison. As a child, Lucio suffered from sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Did the girl fall down the stairs or did her mother kill her?

On the night of February 17, 2007, the Harlingen Police Department (HPD) received an emergency call requesting the presence of the authorities in an apartment on Lee Street, where a girl was unconscious.

Lucio told the police that Mariah Alvarez had fallen down the stairs, documents show. However, according to EFE, a medical examiner testified during the trial that the autopsy revealed that the girl did not die from falling down the stairs and that some of her injuries indicated death from blunt force trauma.

Mariah Álvarez had bites and bruises on her body

The group of HPD patrolmen who found little Mariah Álvarez stated that she was unconscious, with bruises, bite marks, and a broken arm, when they responded to the emergency call. The two-year-old was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

It is also revealed in the legal documents of the case that the emergency room doctor who tried to revive the little girl stated that it was the worst case of child abuse he had ever seen. Melissa Lucio told authorities that she was responsible for the bite marks and bruises on her daughter’s body.

The irregularities revealed by the Sabrina Van Tassel documentary

Sabrina Van Tassel revealed various irregularities in her documentary State of Texas vs. Melissa. The film highlights that Peter Gilman, the public defender assigned to Melissa Lucio, did not speak with any family member or acquaintance of the accused to testify to her peaceful character or the traumas she suffered after a childhood of abuse.

According to EFE, Peter Gilman also hid a confession that another daughter of Melissa Lucio declared that the deceased little girl had been pushed down some steep stairs. That detail is not recorded in the case documents, but it is in the documentary.

Selina Flores speaks about the alleged abuse of her mother

EFE reveals that Selina Flores, another of Melissa Lucio’s daughters, said in a  TikTok video that the documentary is biased in favor of her mother and did not include what many of the woman’s other children had to say about her abuse.

«I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinion about who they think is guilty, but the only ones who know the truth are those who were in the house when the abuse occurred,» said Selina Flores in a message that has thousands of views.

Should Melissa Lucio be executed despite these irregularities?

Melissa Lucio was arrested on February 18, 2007, accused of beating her daughter Mariah Álvarez to death. Roberto Antonio Álvarez was arrested and accused of exposing a minor to danger by omission and negligence. The two were taken to the county jail.

The nonprofit organization Innocence Project, which defends people who allegedly have been wrongfully convicted, maintains that Melissa Lucio’s statement, in which she admitted to having killed her daughter Mariah Álvarez, was made under coercion by detectives. The woman is three months away from being executed.

The post Relatives of Melissa Lucio ask that her death sentence be suspended appeared first on Mundo Hispanico.