U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Review Federal Appeals Court Ruling Overturning Grant of a New Trial for Texas Woman on Death Row for What May Have Been the Accidental Death of Her Child

The U.S. Supreme Court on October 18, 2021 denied review in the case of Texas death-row pris­on­er Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pic­tured). Lucio was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death on charges that she mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter, Mariah. Lucio has long main­tained that Mariah died from an accidental fall.

During a lengthy inter­ro­ga­tion by police on the night her daugh­ter died, Lucio gave a state­ment that pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed to the jury as a con­fes­sion to killing Mariah. 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.” 

At tri­al, Lucio’s defense team sought to intro­duce tes­ti­mo­ny from two experts in trau­ma and men­tal health. Social work­er Norma Villanueva and psy­chol­o­gist Dr. John Pinkerman 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. 

In 2019, a pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit grant­ed Lucio a new tri­al, find­ing that the tri­al court’s exclu­sion of tes­ti­mo­ny from the two experts had vio­lat­ed Lucio’s right to present a ​“com­plete defense.” It was only the sec­ond time in more than 150 cas­es that the cir­cuit court had grant­ed relief to a Texas habeas cor­pus peti­tion­er sen­tenced to death this cen­tu­ry. However, in February 2021, the full Fifth Circuit reversed that rul­ing by a 10 – 7 vote, rein­stat­ing Lucio’s death sentence. 

Lucio sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, receiv­ing sup­port from a coali­tion of advo­cates for vic­tims of domes­tic and gen­der-based vio­lence, for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, legal schol­ars, and inno­cence orga­ni­za­tions. In ami­cus briefs filed with the court, anti-vio­lence advo­cates explained that Lucio’s his­to­ry made her more like­ly to false­ly con­fess: ​“Research shows that past trau­ma is ​‘sig­nif­i­cant­ly asso­ci­at­ed’ with height­ened sug­gestibil­i­ty among indi­vid­u­als who false­ly con­fess to crimes,” they wrote. ​“The legal pro­ceed­ings in Melissa Lucio’s case expose the legal system’s fail­ure to under­stand the con­se­quences of gen­der-based vio­lence and its rel­e­vance in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” they said.