Bipartisan Majority of Texas House of Representatives Calls for Clemency for Melissa Lucio, Facing Execution for Likely Accidental Death of Disabled Daughter

Nearly 90 mem­bers of the Texas House of Representatives from across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum have issued a bipar­ti­san call for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to grant clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­er Melissa Lucio.

In a news con­fer­ence in the state capi­tol on March 24, 2022, State Rep. Jeff Leach (R‑Plano, pic­tured), co-chair of the House’s bipar­ti­san Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, announced that 81 House mem­bers had signed a let­ter urg­ing Governor Abbott and the par­dons board to spare Lucio, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed April 27. Leach was joined in the well of the House by five oth­er House law­mak­ers, Reps. Rafael Anchia (D‑Dallas), Lacey Hull (R‑Houston), Joe Moody (D‑El Paso), Senfronia Thompson (D‑Houston), and James White (R‑Hillister), who urged that Lucio be grant­ed clemen­cy. By the end of the news con­fer­ence, six more Republican House mem­bers had asked to sign on the let­ter, Leach said.

Lucio was sen­tenced to death in Cameron County, Texas in 2008 on charges that she mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter, Mariah. Lucio’s legal team filed a clemen­cy peti­tion with the par­dons board on March 22, 2022, argu­ing that new expert reviews of the evi­dence in her case demon­strate that the tod­dler died from an acci­den­tal fall down steep stairs at the family’s new home. The peti­tion includ­ed state­ments of sup­port from jurors, foren­sic and med­ical experts, anti-domes­tic vio­lence activists, reli­gious lead­ers, exonerees, and Lucio’s sib­lings and children. 

“The sys­tem lit­er­al­ly failed Melissa Lucio at every sin­gle turn,” Leach said at the news con­fer­ence. ​“As a con­ser­v­a­tive Republican myself, who has long been a sup­port­er of the death penal­ty in the most heinous cas­es, I have nev­er seen a more troubling case.”

Rep. Moody, the co-founder of the jus­tice reform cau­cus, said ​“this case shows that the death penal­ty process in Texas can­not be trust­ed to pro­vide jus­tice to all of us.”

Rep. Hull agreed, call­ing the case ​“espe­cial­ly trou­ble­some, maybe the most ques­tion­able and con­cern­ing death penal­ty case Texas has seen in some time.” ​“The facts sim­ply do not sup­port any con­clu­sion that Ms. Lucio com­mit­ted cap­i­tal mur­der and is deserv­ing of the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment from the state of Texas,” she said. ​“We pol­i­cy­mak­ers have an oblig­a­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak out when there is injus­tice. Here, in the case of Melissa Lucio, there is clear injustice.”

Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D‑Houston, said Lucio was sub­ject to ​“a life­time of domes­tic abuse and trau­ma that numer­ous stud­ies have con­firmed makes her espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to coer­cion and accept­ing blame for a crime she did­n’t com­mit.” She not­ed that the inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques used to secure Lucio’s state­ment that she was respon­si­ble for Mariah’s death ​“have been shown to wear down sub­jects into false con­fes­sions.” ​“In this case, Melissa denied hav­ing done this 80 times over the course of inter­ro­ga­tion before final­ly sim­ply agree­ing with the inter­roga­tors who were say­ing instead of sup­ply­ing her own account of what hap­pened,” Thompson said. 

Rep. Anchia stressed that all six of Lucio’s remain­ing chil­dren sub­mit­ted vic­tim-impact state­ments to the par­dons board implor­ing the board to spare their mother’s life. ​“They are want­i­ng to see their moth­er live,” Anchia said. ​“The peo­ple who are alive to tell Mariah’s sto­ry and advo­cate for Mariah, all are say­ing do not kill Melissa and that is the most important thing.”

In an inter­view with The Texan after the news con­fer­ence, White ques­tioned the com­pe­tence of Lucio’s lawyers at tri­al. ​“It would be good for us to have an insti­tu­tion or a process where we nur­ture a core of attor­neys that we know have the req­ui­site skill set and expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with these cas­es,” he said.

Lucio’s Clemency Petition

Lucio’s clemen­cy peti­tion described her case as a con­tin­u­ing vic­tim­iza­tion of her entire family.

“Fifteen years ago, a lov­ing fam­i­ly suf­fered an unfath­omable loss when two-year-old Mariah Alvarez died days after an acci­den­tal fall down a flight of stairs,” her lawyers wrote. ​“The fam­i­ly now faces the incal­cu­la­ble loss of their beloved moth­er, sis­ter, and grand­moth­er, slat­ed to be exe­cut­ed for a crime that nev­er occurred. The exe­cu­tion of Melissa Lucio would be a his­toric mis­car­riage of jus­tice. The Board has the pow­er to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of a wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed woman and spare this fam­i­ly the anguish of los­ing Melissa, com­pound­ing the tragedy they have already endured.”

The peti­tion argues that pros­e­cu­tors relied heav­i­ly on a coerced con­fes­sion and unsci­en­tif­ic tes­ti­mo­ny from an expert in their case against Lucio. Lucio, a sur­vivor of domes­tic vio­lence, has spent more than 13 years on death row after the death of her toddler.

Lucio’s legal team con­tends that Mariah died from com­pli­ca­tions stem­ming from an acci­den­tal fall down stairs at the Lucio home two days ear­li­er. Medical records show Mariah had a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty that left her prone to stum­bling and falling. Hours after Mariah’s death, Lucio was brought in for a late night of exten­sive ques­tion­ing. According to the peti­tion, Lucio report­ed­ly denied hurt­ing Mariah more than 100 times before, grief-strick­en, she yield­ed to the interrogator’s repeat­ed demands to ​“get it over with” and said ““What am I going to say? I — I’m respon­si­ble for it.” 

Around the time of the tri­al, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Dr. John Pinkerman said he reviewed the inter­ro­ga­tion and was pre­pared to tes­ti­fy that Lucio’s psy­cho­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics increased the like­li­hood that she would acqui­esce dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tion. Pinkerman said that when Lucio admit­ted ​“I’m respon­si­ble” hours after her child’s death, she appeared to be tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the ​“whole con­fig­u­ra­tion of the abuse and med­ical neglect by the fam­i­ly,” not for alleged­ly killing Mariah by phys­i­cal­ly striking her.

“My review of her video­taped state­ments revealed that she was iso­lat­ed for approx­i­mate­ly 5 hours, repeat­ed­ly inter­ro­gat­ed by male police offi­cers in close quar­ters, was not pro­vid­ed a place of oppor­tu­ni­ty to rest and not pro­vid­ed food or water,” Pinkerman said in an affi­davit sub­mit­ted to the par­dons board. Pinkerman said he raised these issues in meet­ings with defense coun­sel, but he was nev­er called to tes­ti­fy and tri­al coun­sel nev­er raised the issues.

The clemen­cy peti­tion also sharply crit­i­cized the method­ol­o­gy and con­clu­sions of the state’s tri­al expert, Dr. Norma Jean Farley, who told the jurors that Mariah could only have died from abuse. The peti­tion argues that Farley’s con­clu­sion was like­ly taint­ed by con­fir­ma­tion bias from the coerced con­fes­sion. National rec­og­nized foren­sic experts who reviewed the evi­dence for the defense con­clud­ed that Mariah’s death was con­sis­tent with med­ical com­pli­ca­tions from a fall down the stairs.

“Dr. Farley failed to con­sid­er Mariah’s pri­or med­ical his­to­ry, which includ­ed trou­ble walk­ing and doc­u­ment­ed falls, as well as a pri­or trau­mat­ic brain injury; infor­ma­tion about Mariah’s behav­ior in the days before she died, includ­ing exces­sive sleep and loss of appetite, which were con­sis­tent with head trau­ma after an acci­den­tal fall; or poten­tial non-abuse caus­es for Mariah’s injuries, includ­ing evi­dence that Mariah had a blood coag­u­la­tion dis­or­der that caus­es pro­fuse bruis­ing through­out the body,” the petition said. 

The peti­tion also pre­sent­ed affi­davits from four of the jurors who vot­ed to sen­tence Lucio to death. Each of the jurors expressed con­cern about the mis­lead­ing nature of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al and said that they would have vot­ed dif­fer­ent­ly had they been pre­sent­ed the evi­dence Lucio’s legal team uncov­ered after the trial. 

The peti­tion also asks the board to show mer­cy to Lucio as a result of the years of domes­tic abuse she expe­ri­enced. Her lawyers argue that a grant of clemen­cy would be advance the poli­cies behind Governor Abbott’s deci­sion to estab­lish a spe­cial par­don process for sur­vivors of domes­tic vio­lence and human trafficking. 

In a let­ter of sup­port for the peti­tion, a coali­tion of 50 anti-domes­tic vio­lence orga­ni­za­tions echoed this call. ​“The police offi­cers who led the inter­ro­ga­tion were male and some were armed,” the coali­tion wrote. ​“One stood over her. One yelled at her. Another detec­tive, who was clear­ly armed, leaned with­in inch­es of her face. … Simply put, this type of inter­ro­ga­tion does not com­port with best prac­tices in the treat­ment of trau­ma sur­vivors. The tac­tics used by the police who inter­ro­gat­ed Melissa were not designed to let her tell her sto­ry. They were designed with one end in mind: to get Melissa to admit that she killed her daughter.” 

Abbott has grant­ed clemen­cy in a death sen­tence case only once, com­mut­ing the death sen­tence of Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker to life in prison less than an hour before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed. Lucio’s peti­tion notes that Whitaker had been con­vict­ed of killing mem­bers of his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ta­tion was grant­ed at the request of the sur­viv­ing mem­ber of his fam­i­ly, his father. Similar con­sid­er­a­tions favor clemen­cy in Lucio’s case, the petition says.