Melissa Lucio’s Daughter Death May Have Been Accidental. Texas Has Scheduled Her Execution for April 27

The state of Texas has issued a death war­rant seek­ing to exe­cute Melissa Lucio (pic­tured), a bat­tered woman who was sen­tenced to death for what may have been an acci­den­tal fall that killed her two-year-old daugh­ter. She is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed April 27, 2022.

In an inter­view with the Texas Observer, Tivon Schardl, a lawyer on Lucio’s appel­late defense team, called her case ​“as clear a case of injus­tice as you’ll ever see.” ​“Melissa Lucio faces immi­nent exe­cu­tion for a cap­i­tal mur­der that nev­er hap­pened,” Schardl said. ​“Melissa, an inno­cent woman, faces exe­cu­tion in less than 100 days because a cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tor relied on a state­ment coerced by an overzeal­ous Texas Ranger who bad­gered a trau­ma­tized woman into mak­ing a false confession.”

Prosecutors at Lucio’s 2008 tri­al alleged that she beat her daugh­ter Mariah to death, but Lucio’s lawyers con­test­ed the cause of death and pre­sent­ed expert tes­ti­mo­ny from a neu­ro­sur­geon that Mariah may instead have died from head trau­ma caused by falling down a flight of stairs. Mariah had a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty that made her walk unsteadi­ly, and she had fall­en down a steep flight of stairs two days before her death. 

Lucio’s con­vic­tion relied on a state­ment obtained dur­ing a five-hour inter­ro­ga­tion by a Texas Ranger who con­tin­u­ous­ly pushed Lucio for incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion. Her lawyers argued that she was denied the right to present a com­plete defense when, after pros­e­cu­tors told the jury she had con­fessed to killing her daugh­ter, the tri­al judge refused to allow her to present expert tes­ti­mo­ny to explain how her life­long his­to­ry as a vic­tim of sex­u­al abuse and domes­tic vio­lence had affect­ed her response to coer­cive police interrogation.

The dis­trict attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed Lucio’s case, Armando Villalobos, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 13-year prison sen­tence imposed in 2014 for bribery and extor­tion. From 2006 through 2012 — includ­ing the time he pros­e­cut­ed Lucio — he had accept­ed more than $100,000 in bribes in exchange for influ­ence over his deci­sions as dis­trict attor­ney. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, he and oth­ers were involved in a ​“scheme to ille­gal­ly gen­er­ate income for them­selves and oth­ers through a pat­tern of bribery and extor­tion, favoritism, improp­er influ­ence, per­son­al self-enrich­ment, self-deal­ing, con­ceal­ment and con­flict of interest.” 

Another mem­ber of Lucio’s defense team, lawyer A. Richard Ellis, said that ​“Melissa Lucio is a bat­tered woman who was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the acci­den­tal death of her daugh­ter, who had fall­en down the stairs at the family’s home. Her con­vic­tion rest­ed on ambigu­ous state­ments Melissa made to police in response to a coer­cive, late-night inter­ro­ga­tion by male police offi­cers. We will fight not only to pre­vent Melissa’s exe­cu­tion but also to win her exon­er­a­tion of these false charges.”

In 2019, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit grant­ed Lucio a new tri­al — a rar­i­ty for a cir­cuit court that had over­turned only one of 150 Texas cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences imposed after 2000. However, that deci­sion was short lived. A divid­ed en banc court vot­ed 10 – 7 in February 2021 to reverse the rul­ing. In October 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Lucio’s peti­tion to review her case.

After Mariah’s body was found in Lucio’s apart­ment, inves­ti­ga­tors ques­tioned Lucio for sev­en hours. Lucio admit­ted to hav­ing spanked Mariah but denied ever hav­ing abused her. Late into the night, after hours of con­tin­u­ous inter­ro­ga­tion, Texas Ranger Victor Escalon pres­sured Lucio to say more. She respond­ed with: ​“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m respon­si­ble for it.” When Escalon lat­er asked her about spe­cif­ic bruis­es on her daughter’s body, Lucio said, ​“I guess I did it. I guess I did it.” A video­tape played to the jury showed Escalon ask­ing Lucio to demon­strate how she ​“spanked” Mariah, and when she didn’t spank hard enough, he spanked the doll him­self. Lucio’s defense attor­neys say there is evi­dence that she did not abuse her chil­dren. Her 11 old­er chil­dren repeat­ed­ly said she did not phys­i­cal­ly harm them or Mariah.

The pros­e­cu­tion char­ac­ter­ized Lucio’s inter­ro­ga­tion as evi­dence that she had abused her daugh­ter, and there­fore must have killed her. Lucio’s lawyers sought to present tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist, Dr. John Pinkerman, to explain the coer­cive effect of the police inter­ro­ga­tion on Lucio, whom he described as a ​“bat­tered woman” who ​“takes blame for every­thing that goes on in the family.” 

The tri­al court barred Pinkerman from tes­ti­fy­ing dur­ing the cul­pa­bil­i­ty phase of Lucio’s tri­al, assert­ing that his tes­ti­mo­ny was irrel­e­vant because Lucio had ​“denied ever hav­ing any­thing to do with the killing of the child.” They also denied the tes­ti­mo­ny of social work­er Norma Villanueva dur­ing the cul­pa­bil­i­ty phase of Lucio’s tri­al — they were only allowed to tes­ti­fy at her penal­ty phase, after she had been con­vict­ed. Both Pinkerman and Villanueva had exam­ined Lucio and said that her life­long his­to­ry of abuse and men­tal ill­ness explained the ​“numb” and ​“dead­pan” emo­tion­al state that police and pros­e­cu­tors inter­pret­ed as evi­dence of her guilt.

Anti-vio­lence advo­cates and legal experts who sub­mit­ted a brief sup­port­ing Lucio to the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in their brief that ​“The State exploit­ed Melissa’s symp­toms of trau­ma to per­suade the jury of her guilt. … Had he been per­mit­ted to tes­ti­fy, Dr. Pinkerman would have explained that Melissa dis­so­ci­at­ed from the real­i­ty of los­ing her daugh­ter and numbed her emo­tions to dis­tance her­self from the pain. In the absence of his expert opin­ion, the jury was apt to con­clude — as the State clear­ly hoped it would — that her lack of vis­i­ble emo­tion was a sign of cold indif­fer­ence to her child’s death.”

Another sup­port­ing brief from the Innocence Project and Innocence Network explained how the police inter­ro­ga­tion of Lucio employed ​“high risk tac­tics” that increased the like­li­hood of a false con­fes­sion. Arguing for the impor­tance of defense experts, the brief states, ​“Experts help juries under­stand the phe­nom­e­non of false con­fes­sions and, there­fore, can help safe­guard against mis­car­riages of jus­tice.” ​“A sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of women who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of killing a child were coerced into false­ly con­fess­ing,” the inno­cence groups wrote. When a bat­tered woman is accused of killing her child, they argued, the ​“need for expert tes­ti­mo­ny to explain these risks to lay juries [is] more acute” and is crit­i­cal to assess­ing the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the alleged confession.