Lawyers for a Texas woman who's denied she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter are hopeful new evidence will stop her April 27 execution. Melissa Lucio's lawyers say her history of sexual and physical abuse led to her giving an unreliable confession.
In their clemency petition, Lucio’s lawyers say that while she had used drugs, leading her to temporarily lose custody of her children, she was a loving mother who worked to remain drug-free and provide for her family. Lucio has 14 children and was pregnant with the youngest two when Mariah died.Lucio and her children struggled through poverty. At times, they were homeless and relied on food banks for meals, according to the petition.
In 2019, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Lucio’s conviction, ruling she was deprived of “her constitutional right to present a meaningful defense.” However, the full court in 2021 said the conviction had to be upheld for procedural reasons, “despite the difficult issue of the exclusion of testimony that might have cast doubt on the credibility of Lucio’s confession.
In a letter last month to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and to Abbott, 83 Texas House members said executing Lucio would be “a miscarriage of justice.”
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