Five words put woman on death row. Now she says she didn’t mean them

A woman accused of the most unthinkable crime landed on death row 14 years ago. Her execution is just weeks away and her lawyers have dropped a bombshell.

Two different stories.

One sets a woman free after 14 years on death row. The other sees her executed for a crime she claims she did not commit.

The stories are being pitted against each other in a legal challenge pursued by lawyers for Melissa Lucio in Texas where the former cleaner and mother-of-14 faces death by lethal injection in less than 100 days.

Ms Lucio was convicted of the murder of her two-year-old daughter Mariah in February, 2007.

According to the Texas Observer, Mariah was declared dead on arrival at hospital after paramedics were called to the family home — a tiny apartment — in Rio Grande Valley.

Ms Lucio told police that the youngest of the couple’s children had fallen down rickety stairs as the family was in the process of moving homes.

A doctor at the hospital found the little girl had suffered a broken arm that was left untreated and had serious head injuries.

Ms Lucio says Mariah fell down the stairs. Police alleged she was beaten to death.

A gruelling, five-hour interrogation followed just hours after the child had died and went until 3am the following morning.

The Washington Post reports Ms Lucio was deprived of food and sleep and “pressured repeatedly to admit to harming her daughter” when she uttered five words that landed her on death row: “I guess I did it.”

Melissa Lucio is on death row in Texas. Picture: Film Rise

In a last-minute bid to avoid becoming the first Latina woman put to death in Texas, Ms Lucio now says she was coerced into taking the blame despite Mariah’s death being an accident.

Her lawyers claim that a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of older male relatives conditioned her to say what they wanted to hear to make it stop.

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 this week: “There is just too much doubt. We cannot move forward in this case and risk executing an innocent woman.”

Her lawyers this week filed a motion with the US Supreme Court arguing their client was denied a fair trial and “there is ample reason to believe” she was convicted in error.

The Innocence Project writes that Ms Lucio was born in Lubbock, Texas to a Catholic, Mexican-American family living below the poverty line and that her earliest memories “are of her mother struggling to escape the blows of her partner”.

“Older relatives began to sexually assault and abuse Melissa from the time she was six years old.

“As a child, she was repeatedly sexually abused, and became a child bride at the age of 16 with the hopes of escaping her abusive environment. Unfortunately, her life did not get easier.”

Melissa Lucio faces execution in less than 90 days in Texas for a crime that never occurred. Read more about her case, and add your name to the #SaveMelissaLucio petition to join @innocence in preventing an irreversible injustice. https://t.co/raNOeX0aYw

— The Innocence Project (@innocence) January 28, 2022

Ms Lucio was pregnant with twins when she was charged with murder and gave birth to the pair in prison before giving them up for adoption.

Multiple media reports show the state of Texas relied on Ms Lucio’s confession because they had no physical evidence with which to convict her.

She did not have a history of violence and thousands of pages of records from child protective services show her children never accused her of doing anything untoward.

There is a lot on the line for Ms Lucio and for Texas. If it goes ahead with the execution, the inmate will become just the sixth woman executed in the US in the last 10 years.

Tivon Schardl, one of Ms Lucio’s lawyers, told the Texas Observer: “This is as clear a case of injustice as you’ll ever see: Melissa Lucio faces imminent execution for a capital murder that never happened.”

A documentary about Ms Lucio’s story, released in 2020 and titled “The State of Texas vs. Melissa”, revealed that one of the reasons Ms Lucio “confessed” was to protect a teenage daughter who had been minding the two-year-old when she fell.

As the Observer reports, that information was never presented in court.

If her appeal is unsuccessful, Ms Lucio will be executed on April 27.