It is very likely that these are the last days of the life of Melissa Lucio, a mother of 14 children who, in 2008, was convicted of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah. The woman will be executed on Wednesday, April 27: her dramatic record will be that of being the first Latin American subject to the death penalty in Texas. But, while she is locked in the cell of the Death Row at Mountain View Prison, Gatesvillemany activists, together with his children, they are mobilizing to stop the execution. Because they are convinced that Melissa Lucio is innocent.
Since February 15, 2007, the day of Mariah’s death, her mom repeats that the little girl died of injuries sustained two days earlier in a fall from the stairs, during a time when she, pregnant with twins, was preparing her other children for school. The prosecutor maintains, however, that the child was beaten to death, and the bruises on her body are proof of this. Mariah, however, suffered from a clotting problem that would be enough to explain those bruises. According to the lawyers, the judgment against Melissa is affected by the social and economic conditions of the woman: always lived in extreme poverty, abused first by her family and then by her husband (whose child she was married to), addicted to drugs.
On the day of her little girl’s death, for nearly six hours, late into the night, Melissa was questioned with the controversial “Reid technique”, which led to numerous wrongful convictions in the United States. The agents, with their faces inches from the woman’s, yelled that she “must know” what had happened to her daughter and that they had “a lot of evidence” that she was responsible for the death. They also forced her to see photographs of the little girl’s lifeless body.
Melissa he insisted more than 100 times that night on reiterating his innocence. But after more than five hours of this aggressive technique, he reached breaking point. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she whispered. “I’m responsible for it … I think I did it.” A forced confession that was used as key evidence for the jury’s guilty verdict and subsequent death sentence.
But “many people who firmly believe in the death penalty have taken action for Melissa, because they are upset that this case is a terrible mistake, ”said Sandra Babcock, a member of the women’s advocacy team and a law professor at Cornell. Suffice it to say that there are those who ask for a suspension of execution 31 Republican members of the Chamber e eight Republican state senators. In addition, five of the jurors who sentenced Melissa also asked for the death penalty to be suspended, arguing that if they had known at the time what has emerged since then, their sentence would have been different. There is also a rigorous document that explains all the errors made during the trial of the woman and asks for her acquittal.
«I believe in God’s justice but I don’t understand how my death it would restore the human one ”, the woman wrote to Pope Francis. “It would only cause more pain to those I have to leave. To my children who have already suffered beyond belief: after losing their sister, they will now also lose their mother. My death won’t bring my Mariah back. I would give my life to embrace it again for just a moment. But it is not possible ».
Other stories of Vanity Fair that might interest you:
Judicial errors, about 990 people a year in prison by mistake
The story of Floriana, detained in Rebibbia: “I would have wanted another life”
“My life sentence was the life sentence of my children”
“Life imprisonment”. Story of a crime
Source: Vanity Fair
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