Melissa Lucio, a Texas mother, has been on death row for over 14 years after the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah. The State of Texas has set her execution date for April 27, 2022.
With her execution approaching, Melissa Lucio is asking Governor Greg Abbott for clemency.
Lucio has maintained that she is innocent throughout the entirety of her time in prison, but an attempt at a new trial was shot down by the State of Texas in 2019.
After passing through an appeals court, the U.S. Supreme Court did not allow Lucio to present her case. A year later, her date for execution was set, The Guardian reports.
However, multiple attorneys and the Innocence Project have claimed Melissa Lucio was convicted of a crime that never occurred, asserting that her daughter’s death should be ruled an accident.
One of Lucio’s attorneys is Professor Sandra Babcock, director for the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.
Babcock told reporters, “Mariah’s death was a tragedy, not a murder.”
On February 15, 2007, Mariah Lucio fell down a flight of stairs outside her apartment as the family was in the process of moving houses.
According to the Innocence Project, Mariah had a “mild physical disability,” which caused her to trip and fall down the staircase. She passed away two days later.
An autopsy revealed Mariah’s cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. Court documents note she was severely bruised when examined.
Doctors at the nearby hospital also noticed “bite marks on her back, one of her arms had been broken probably about two to seven weeks before her death, and she was missing portions of her hair where it had been pulled out by the roots.”
Melissa Lucio stated that her siblings could be “rough” with Mariah.
Investigators questioned Melissa for five hours immediately following Mariah’s fall until at 3 a.m., when she said, “I guess I did it.”
The Innocence Project claims that their interrogation methods were “coercive” and pressured Melissa Lucio, who was pregnant, into making the allegedly false statement.
Lucio’s attorneys argued that imitation and shock led Lucio to give a false confession. She also admitted to spanking Mariah, which the prosecutors presented as evidence against her. Prosecutors during the trial additionally pointed out the statement made by the doctor who tried to revive Mariah, who called it the “absolute worst” case of child abuse he had ever seen.
The request for clemency was submitted to Abbott, who will have the final say in Melissa Lucio’s case.
