On the night of 15 February 2007, a staff of 5 cops in Cameron county, Texas, started an interrogation of a Mexican American mom whom they suspected of getting murdered her two-year-old baby.
Melissa Lucio was in a weak situation. She was pregnant with twins and within the grip of shock and grief. Simply two hours earlier her youngest baby Mariah had been pronounced useless having fallen unconscious.
The officers didn't let the suspect’s vulnerabilities get in the best way of the inquisition. Over nearly six hours, stretching late into the night time, they utilized to Lucio the infamous “Reid Approach” – a controversial interrogation technique that has led to quite a few wrongful convictions within the US.
As educated to do beneath the system, the officers put their faces inside inches of Lucio’s, screaming at her that she “needed to know” what had occurred to her baby. That they had “a lot of proof” that she was responsible for the dying, they mentioned, forcing her to view pictures of the lady’s lifeless physique.
Then, because the Reid technique dictates, they abruptly switched tone. They gently reassured her that she may “put this to relaxation” if she would solely confess to having induced the toddler’s dying.
Lucio insisted over 100 occasions that night time that she was harmless. However after greater than 5 hours of aggressive “maximization” and “minimization”, because the method is thought, she reached break level.
She started to repeat the phrases that the investigators had successfully coached her to say.
“I don’t know what you need me to say,” she advised them. “I’m chargeable for it … I suppose I did it.”
That coerced confession was the core proof offered at Lucio’s subsequent trial. It was crucial to the jury’s responsible verdict, and to the dying sentence that adopted.
Subsequent Wednesday, pending a last-minute keep, Lucio, 52, might be executed for against the law that important proof suggests she didn't commit. Not solely that, however important proof additionally means that the crime for which she might be strapped onto a gurney and injected with deadly medication by no means occurred within the first place.
A mounting physique of intelligence – a lot of it by no means heard at trial, a few of it actively suppressed by prosecutors – factors to a really completely different conclusion. Mariah was not crushed to dying by her mom; she died of inner accidents from an unintentional fall.
Because the 27 April execution date approaches, concern that an harmless girl is about to be despatched to the dying chamber has reached fever pitch. Unusual bedfellows have come collectively to name for the execution to be delayed in an eruption of disquiet that has not often been witnessed in such depth in Texas.
“There are such a lot of layers of injustice right here that it has drawn the assist of unlikely allies. Individuals who might imagine very strongly within the dying penalty are talking out as a result of they're disturbed that this case has gone terribly incorrect,” mentioned Sandra Babcock, a member of Lucio’s protection staff and a Cornell legislation college professor.
Amongst these calling for a keep of execution are a bipartisan group of 103 members of the Texas legislature – together with 32 Republican members of the Home and eight Republican state senators. That's a rare show of cross-party unity for such a toxically divided meeting.
Tons of of non secular our bodies, together with ladies’s and home violence advocacy teams, have joined celebrities equivalent to Kim Kardashian to plead with the Republican governor Greg Abbott and the state’s board of pardons to intervene. A documentary concerning the case, The State of Texas v Melissa, was launched in 2020.
5 of the jurors who convicted Lucio have additionally known as for a reprieve. They argue that if they'd recognized on the time what has since emerged the result would have been completely different.
The numerous authorized missteps that lie behind Lucio’s dying sentence are specified by a 266-page petition launched this week that requires a postponement of the execution and a brand new trial. The prisoner’s legal professionals start by exploring the wealth of proof that Mariah died by mishap reasonably than in a brutal homicide.
As Lucio was being interrogated by Cameron county detectives, in a separate room within the police station a few of her different kids (she had 9 at the moment) have been additionally being questioned. They advised investigators that their mom had by no means been abusive or violent in any manner.
The youngsters additionally mentioned that two days earlier than Mariah died, they'd seen their sibling by accident fall down a steep flight of stairs on the surface of the home they have been renting. Lucio, who had been busy getting the kids prepared for varsity, discovered the lady on the backside of the steps crying.
Over the subsequent 48 hours household witnesses mentioned that Mariah confirmed indicators of misery, together with sleeping lengthy hours and being listless. None of that proof, which may assist the prognosis of an inner mind harm brought on by the autumn, was offered at trial.
Nor did the jury hear that Mariah had a medical historical past of problem strolling that had resulted in earlier documented tumbles.
Two days after falling down the steps, Mariah stopped respiratory and have become unresponsive. Lucio dialed 911; paramedics tried to revive the kid however she died earlier than reaching the hospital.
Babcock advised the Guardian that a sequence of errors have been made by police, the prosecutor and knowledgeable witnesses that each one flowed from the identical supply: an preliminary misreading of the suspect’s mindset. Lucio had been introduced up in an especially poor and troubled household in Lubbock, Texas, during which she had been subjected to sexual assault from the age of six and at 16 had grow to be a baby bride in a bid to flee the abuse.
Lengthy years of home violence ensued. Her cumulative experiences – by no means advised to the jury – made her singularly weak to creating a false confession in the midst of a coercive interrogation.
It additionally helped clarify the bemusement of first responders after they turned up at her home having answered the 911 name. They discovered her slouched on the ground, the place she confirmed no signal of emotion or crying.
Babcock mentioned that was the traditional posture of a sufferer of home violence triggered by a traumatic occasion. “She was numb, in shock, she was dissociating.”
However to cops and different first responders, she got here throughout as a callous and cold-hearted particular person who appeared unmoved by her baby’s dying. “They noticed a girl who didn’t match their mannequin of how a grieving mom ought to behave, and so they instantly jumped to the conclusion that this was a girl who had one thing to cover.”
At trial, one of many Texas rangers who was first on the scene advised the jury that he had discovered Lucio along with her head down, making no eye contact and displaying no obvious concern about Mariah. “Proper there after which, I knew she did one thing. That’s one of the vital frequent clues – somebody with their shoulders slouched ahead: they’re hiding the reality,” he mentioned.
That testimony was false. A number of scientific research have proven that you just can not deduce something a couple of suspect’s guilt or innocence from their physique language or facial mannerisms.
The medical expert who carried out the post-mortem, Dr Norma Farley, confirmed the same willingness to prejudge Lucio’s guilt. In her testimony, Farley made a number of crucial statements which have been proven to be scientifically inaccurate.
She mentioned that bruising on Mariah’s physique should have been brought on by a “homicidal” extreme beating. False. A medical assessment of the post-mortem studies criticized the medical expert for failing to detect clear indicators that the kid had a blood coagulation dysfunction that might have produced intensive bruising all through the physique.
Farley mentioned that Mariah’s accidents needed to have been inflicted inside 24 hours of her dying – a big element because it dominated out as reason for dying the autumn on the staircase two days earlier than. That was false too. A medical knowledgeable who reviewed the proof identified that it's effectively established that bodily manifestations of an harm can take a number of days to look.
Farley additionally advised the jury that at the least two chunk marks had been discovered on Mariah’s again and that they have been brought on by an grownup’s tooth suggesting a brutal and painful assault. False. Chunk mark evaluation has been completely discredited.
Quite a few scientific research have proven that there is no such thing as a option to categorically establish a wound on a physique as being a chunk mark. Neither is there any option to establish from the wound who may need induced the abrasion.
Dr Janice Ophoven, the pediatric forensic pathologist who reviewed the Lucio supplies, concluded: “The investigation into Mariah’s dying seems to have been considerably prejudiced … and creates a danger of [a] severe miscarriage of justice on this case.”
This week Lucio was positioned on “execution watch” – a system of 24-hour surveillance that each one dying row inmates are topic to in Texas of their final seven days earlier than execution. Jail authorities say it's to keep away from the chance of suicide or self hurt, however Babcock advised the Guardian that Lucio discovered the association “very upsetting”.
“She finds the concept of being noticed 24/7 extraordinarily anxious, and day-after-day that passes is someday nearer to her attainable execution. The fear is actual.”
Each the courtroom of legal appeals in Austin, Texas, and the state’s board of pardons are contemplating Lucio’s plea. A keep of execution is feasible, given the various obtrusive flaws in how she got here to be placed on dying row.
Lucio is a girl of deep religion who hopes and prays that her life might be spared, Babcock mentioned. However she additionally is aware of there is no such thing as a certainty – not within the dying penalty and particularly not when a state as relentless as Texas is out to take her life.
“That is the cruelty of alternating between hope and despair,” Babcock mentioned. “It's torture, and day-after-day is extra torturous than the final.”
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