Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz indicated he may intervene to stop Melissa Lucio’s April 27 execution, after an hour of urging from a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
has urged the state parole board and governor to spare Lucio’s life.
Outside of court intervention or a motion from Saenz, Lucio’s execution can be stopped if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends either changing her sentence from death to life in prison or postponing the execution date for up to 120 days. Gov.would have to accept the board’s recommendation, which is not expected until two days before Lucio’s April 27 execution date.
“To these eyes, this case is a systemic failure, producing a train of injustice which only the hand of the Governor can halt,” Judge Patrick Higginbotham, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in a footnote of the court’s latest denial for Lucio last month.In 2007, emergency personnel rushed to a Harlingen apartment newly occupied by 38-year-old Lucio, her common-law husband and nine of her 12 children.
“I guess I did it,” she said. When he asked how, she shrugged and said “Probably pinched her or something.” “You’ve decided the person is guilty and the whole purpose is to get a statement of admission,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at The Innocence Project, who said the idea of a “human lie detector” has also been renounced.
“They just kept throwing so many words at me, and I just told them I’m responsible for Mariah’s bruises,” Lucio said inLucio’s advocates also argue the jury never got to hear critical testimony that could explain why Lucio, a longtime victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence, might falsely confess. State district Judge Arturo Nelson refused to allow a social worker and psychologist to testify for Lucio’s innocence defense at trial.
“The [dissenting judges] express well their view that there was expert testimony that, if jurors had only heard it, could have impacted the verdict. We are all, though, working within the constraints of AEDPA,” wrote Judge Leslie Southwick, a President George W. Bush appointee. She got married at 16 and had five children before she was 24. Her husband was reportedly abusive physically and emotionally, and Lucio became addicted to cocaine.
After two years of visitations and Lucio’s repeated negative drug tests, the children were returned three months before Mariah died. Lucio told police she had been clean for a year on the night her daughter died. One of the children, 9 at the time, told investigators that he saw Mariah fall down the stairs. Two months before Mariah’s death, a CPS case worker reported during a home visit that two of the teenaged girls were in the apartment alone with Mariah and her 3-year-old sister, according to a court briefing. The case worker noted with concern that the 3-year-old had started to go down the stairs unsupervised.
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