Huge twist 13 days out from Melissa Lucio’s execution

A mother accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter has had a breakthrough days before she is be executed. But it might not save her.

A mother accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter has had a breakthrough in her case just days before she is due to be executed. But it might not be enough to save her.

Melissa Lucio, who has 14 children, faces lethal injection in just 13 days for killing her daughter Mariah in 2007.

The little girl’s body was found at the family home covered in bruises days after she fell down stairs.

Prosecutors successfully argued Ms Lucio beat the child to death.

But the death row inmate has always maintained Mariah’s death was an accident and that she was coerced into a confession after hours of interrogation where she was deprived food and water and a lawyer.

Her claims have fallen on deaf ears, but less than two weeks before a cocktail of drugs is to enter her system, ending her life, the 50-year-old has been offered a chance.

The Cameron County District Attorney who put Ms Lucio on death row in the first place this week said that if a judge does not stop her execution, he will.

So heartbreaking to read this letter from Melissa Lucio’s children begging for the state not to kill their mother. There are so many unresolved questions surrounding this case and the evidence that was used to convict her. pic.twitter.com/SjEtsfmZeq

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) April 7, 2022

At a hearing on Tuesday, Luis Saenz joined bipartisan group of more than 80 Texas House members concerned that new evidence proves Ms Lucio’s innocence.

“If defendant Lucio does not get a stay by a certain day, then I will do what I have to do and stop it,” he said.

It is welcome news for Ms Lucio and her supporters — a group that now includes Kim Kardashian — but as Vice reports, Ms Lucio will remain on death row even if the District Attorney steps in.

She will need a full pardon to have her death sentence dropped.

Video prosecutors relied on for death sentence

Ms Lucio’s case rests on two pieces of video footage.

The first video shows one of her sons speaking with detectives in the hours after little Mariah had died.

In it, the boy is asked by a female officer: “Did you see (your sister) fall (down the stairs) or did somebody tell you that she fell?”

He responds: “No, I saw (her fall).”

Journalist and documentary maker Sabrina Van Tassell, who directed the film The State of Texas vs Melissa, said the interview with Ms Lucio’s son “was never presented to the court and none of those kids ever said that their mother was beating up on Mariah”.

One of Melissa Lucio’s sons told a detective he saw the little girl fall down stairs. Picture: Film Rise

A second video shows Ms Lucio herself being pushed to breaking point in a gruelling seven-hour interrogation that started just hours after the little girl died and went until 3am.

Footage from the interrogation shows detectives pressing the grieving mother about whether she is a “cold-blooded killer”.

“First of all, I’m very sad that this child died,” a detective tells her.

“Right now it looks like you’re a cold-blooded killer. Now, are you a cold-blooded killer or were you a frustrated mother who just took it out on her?

“It happens. We all make mistakes. We already know what happened.”

Ms Lucio was interrogated without food, water or a lawyer. It ended with her telling detectives “I guess I did it. I’m responsible.”

The 50-year-old now says she was taking responsibility for her daughter’s fall to steer detectives away from blaming another of her children who was babysitting at the time.

“Basically what they were trying to make me admit was that I was the one responsible for her fall,” Ms Lucio tells documentary makers in The State of Texas vs Melissa.

“And I kept telling them that I hadn’t hurt my daughter and they were very vulgar, very rough, very persistent.

“They wanted me to admit to something that I was not capable of doing to my child. The interrogation continued for maybe 6-7 hours.”

The stairs where Melissa Lucio’s daughter is believed to have fallen. Picture: Film Rise

The Innocence Project, an organisation that “exonerates the wrongly convicted”, put it this way: “(Ms Lucio) broke down and told investigators what they wanted to hear to make the questioning stop.”

A lawyer for Ms Lucio said last month: “There is just too much doubt. We cannot move forward in this case and risk executing an innocent woman.”

Looming execution attracts international attention

The April 27 execution has drawn attention from people around the world, including celebrity Kim Kardashian.

The reality star tweeted to her tens of millions of followers on Wednesday that there were “so many unresolved questions surrounding this case and the evidence that was used to convict her.”

And Lucio’s story has ignited media in Latin America, fascinated by the tale of the first Hispanic woman to be sentenced to death in Texas — the US state that has executed the most people in the 21st century.

In France, former presidential candidate Christiane Taubira said Lucio is probably a “victim of a miscarriage of justice.”

Even one of the jurors who sentenced her expressed his “deep regret” in an editorial published on Sunday.

Melissa Lucio, centre, bows her head in prayer during a meeting with a bipartisan group of Texas politicians at Gatesville Correctional Facility, Texas, on April, 6, 2022. Picture: Jeff Leach / AFP

Lucio is also winning support from US Republicans, traditionally defenders of capital punishment.

Ms Lucio’s son John told AFP that when his mother saw messages from celebrities like Kardashian, “she couldn’t believe it”.

The last 15 years have been “very difficult,” said Lucio, who was a teenager at the time of the tragedy and had “to cope with it, knowing that I lost my sister and then my mother being charged for it”.

But this year “has been the hardest because we got the execution date in January,” the 32-year-old said.

He is convinced that she would never have been condemned “if she had had the money”.

The case brings to light the issue of false confessions.

It is difficult to estimate how many there may have been, but according to data from The Innocence Project, which fights against miscarriages of justice, out of every four people wrongly convicted and exonerated thanks to DNA evidence, one had already confessed to the crime.

In homicide cases, that number rises to 60 per cent, according to Saul Kassin, professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

And someone who, like Lucio, has experienced trauma and violence is “less resistant, more likely to comply, they have less tolerance for the stress of an interrogation,” and is therefore more likely to admit to a crime they did not commit, he said.

Lucio has exhausted her appeals but her team has filed a clemency petition, typically not decided until days before an execution.

Prosecutors can also withdraw the death warrant and agree to reinvestigate the case.

And if all else fails, Texas governor Greg Abbott still has the authority to delay Lucio’s death.

A strong supporter of capital punishment, he has only granted clemency once before.

— with AFP