BROWNSVILLE – In growing numbers, many Catholics in the Rio Grande Valley are joining Bishop Daniel E. Flores and others to urge state officials to stop the scheduled April execution of Melissa Lucio, a Brownsville woman convicted of capital murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah.
“I want to say a word to the People of the Valley about Melissa Lucio’s pending execution. Death is not the answer to death. One tragedy is not somehow made better by killing someone else,” Bishop Flores stated recently about this case. “Justice is not suddenly restored because another person dies. Executing Melissa will not bring peace to her surviving children, it will only bring more pain and suffering.
“I urge the State of Texas to commute Melissa’s death sentence.”
When authorities were called to the Lucio home in 2007 about an unresponsive child, they were told that little Mariah had fallen down stairs a couple of days earlier. The toddler suffered from a birth defect to her feet that affected her ability to walk and stand. But other signs pointed to abuse, with suspicion almost immediately directed to the mother.
While there is little doubt and much evidence that Mariah suffered abuse in her home, no evidence emerged after her death that her mother was directly at fault. Several other people lived in the household or had access to it, and advocates for Melissa Lucio believe that someone else was responsible for Mariah’s various injuries. However, blame and charges landed squarely on Lucio after police extracted from her a vague confession – later recanted – after a protracted interrogation lasting several hours.
Under the direction of then-Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos, a capital murder charge was pursued in the case. In 2008, Lucio was found guilty and became the first Hispanic woman in Texas history to be sentenced to death. With the high-profile conviction, Villalobos won re-election, but he was later convicted himself of extortion and bribery unrelated to the Lucio case. He is now serving 13 years in federal prison – a point cited by critics of the Lucio prosecution.
As Lucio’s execution date approaches, some of her advocates maintain that Mariah’s death was nothing more than an accident in which Melissa Lucio played no part, while the State of Texas has remained adamant that her mother murdered her, thwarting her appeals at every turn.
The peculiarities of the case – a lack of direct evidence, an incomplete investigation, the unusual determination of the former district attorney to obtain a capital murder conviction, and exclusion of certain mitigating testimony and defense witnesses – have long drawn the attention of activists and advocates for Lucio. These efforts have a new urgency since the 138th District Court in Brownsville on Jan. 14 signed authorization for an April 27 execution date. Her family and supporters are now campaigning around the state to draw more attention to her case and pending execution with an online petition, rallies and lobbying on her behalf.
Part of her supporters’ efforts focus on promoting widespread public viewing of a 2020 documentary called “The State of Texas vs. Melissa,” which the family says illustrates and proves Lucio’s innocence.
Another organization supporting Lucio is the Innocence Project, whose posted mission statement says it “exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” Lucio’s case is featured prominently on the Innocence Project website.
Her supporters also have started a website dedicated to her situation called https://freemelissalucio.org/.
The lack of direct evidence obvious from the beginning has prompted a string of appeals, including one denied in 2011. Another in 2019 reached a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned Lucio’s sentence on grounds that the trial court interfered with Lucio's right to present a defense. That decision, however, was overturned, allowing Lucio’s conviction and death sentence to stand.
A recent story in Newsweek magazine summarized some of the defects in the prosecution of Lucio’s case:
The filing said the prosecution's case rested on the incriminating statement Lucio had given in custody, "knowing there would be conflicting expert testimony" about the cause of Mariah's head injury.
The state never presented evidence that Lucio had abused Mariah or any of her other children, the filing said. It also noted that the trial judge had prohibited testimony from expert witnesses who could have explained how Lucio's past trauma influenced her statement to police.
A federal appeals court later held that Lucio had been denied her constitutional right to present a meaningful defense when this testimony was excluded.
The Innocence Project’s report detailed how close Lucio has come to getting a new trial:
A panel of federal judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in a unanimous three-judge opinion that Ms. Lucio was denied the right to present “a meaningful defense.” And in a subsequent decision following an appeal from the state, 10 out of the Fifth Circuit’s 17 judges agreed that the exclusion of the psychologist’s testimony skewed the evidence against Ms. Lucio.
The seven judges who dissented agreed that the State Court’s rejection of the psychology and mental health experts’ testimony and Ms. Lucio’s defense was “irrational” and expressed outrage, but concluded the court could not grant relief because of the strict limits of federal court review. On behalf of the seven dissenting judges, Judge Catharina Haynes, wrote “The State presented no physical evidence or witness testimony establishing that Lucio abused Mariah or any of her children, let alone killed Mariah … The jury was deprived of key evidence to weigh: that is the point.”
Despite these setbacks, Lucio steadfastly maintained her innocence. The unusually severe sentence, the paucity of evidence and Lucio’s own hard life eventually garnered more attention and attracted more people and organizations to her defense.
The Innocence Project, as noted, features her case prominently on its website and includes a biography of Lucio in which she is profiled as “a survivor of lifelong, repeated sexual assault and domestic violence, who grew up in a Catholic, Mexican-American family living below the poverty line in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.”
It goes on to detail her childhood of prolonged sexual abuse at the hands of two adult male relatives, followed by her own adult life of violently abusive marriage and relationships that nonetheless resulted in nine children, including Mariah, who was the youngest at the time of her death. Melissa Lucio was pregnant at the time of her incarceration and subsequently gave birth to twin boys.
The Innocence Project biography states that “though her family lived in poverty and experienced homelessness at times, Ms. Lucio was a loving and caring mother, despite struggling to provide financially for her family.”
The Innocence Project narrative notes that “interviews and records from Child Protective Services show that Ms. Lucio’s children never said she was violent with any of them.”
Indeed, since her arrest, conviction and incarceration, her other children have said the same thing.
The film’s director, Sabrina Van Tassel, is an investigative journalist and filmmaker who works internationally. In an interview with KRGV Channel 5 that aired Feb. 17, she said of her work about this case, “It was clear to me that had Melissa Lucio not been a poor Hispanic mother, she would not be on Death Row. That is the reason why I started doing this film, because, you know, all lives matter, and the justice system should be the same for everybody, whether you’re white or brown or black.”
The documentary can be viewed on Hulu, and also will be streamed free of charge for 48 hours starting March 7 on https://freemelissalucio.org/.
In support of the State of Texas meting out capital punishment for Mariah Lucio’s death, current Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz recently released a statement to KRGV Channel 5 detailing a long list of injuries that Mariah had suffered over time. These injuries, drawn from official medical reports, clearly indicate abuse on the part of someone.
The Innocence Project, on the other hand, describes Mariah’s death only as a “tragic, accidental fall.”
Less than two months remain before the scheduled late April execution of Melissa Lucio, who would be the first Latina woman in Texas history to undergo capital punishment.
Almost lost in this chain of events is the tragedy of the victim, Mariah Lucio. If officialdom persists in taking the easy road of executing her mother and avoiding the efforts needed to clearly determine who is truly and beyond a reasonable doubt responsible for Mariah’s death, a second tragic injustice will come to pass. As the Church notes in its opposition to the death penalty, execution is an irreversible punishment that precludes further opportunity for repentance and reclamation.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in its publication, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death, says, “For many left behind, a death sentence offers the illusion of closure and vindication. No act, even an execution, can bring back a loved one or heal terrible wounds. The pain and loss of one death cannot be wiped away by another death.”
Bishop Flores has said of Lucio and her situation, “Let us not give up on her life. I ask everyone to work and pray to end the death penalty in Texas and in this country.”
New, thorough and complete efforts on the part of law enforcement and the judicial system are the remedy for justice to be properly served in this sad story.
The faithful of the Diocese of Brownsville can delve further into the Melissa Lucio case themselves, including examining facts, contention and viewpoints presented on the websites noted. At this late date, public outcry will likely be the only way to produce a delay in the execution and a proper reexamination of this case.
Sources include: