Activists are calling on Texas authorities to reconsider the death penalty on death row inmate Melissa Lucio of Latina ahead of her scheduled execution by lethal injection on April 27.
Lucio, who was convicted in 2007 of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, maintains her innocence, saying in a 2020 Hulu documentary that interrogators forced her to make a false confession.
Supporters, including a group of 83 bipartisan Texas lawmakers and Kim Kardashian, urge the governor to commute Lucio’s sentence. Kardashian took to Twitter on Wednesday to raise awareness and shared a letter to lawmakers, signed by Lucio’s 13 surviving children, asking for her life to be spared.
“It is heartbreaking to read this letter from Melissa Lucio’s children begging the state not to kill their mother. There are so many unresolved questions about this case and the evidence used to convict her,” said Kardashian, who is an advocate. has been for criminal justice reform.
Lucio was convicted in August 2008 of murdering her daughter Mariah. Her family claims Mariah died after accidentally falling down a flight of stairs.
A juror, Johnny Galvan Jr, wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle on April 3, saying he felt “deep regret” after “learning about all the things that jurors were never told when we held Lucio’s life in our hands. “
If lawmakers don’t act by April 27, Lucio will become the first Latina to be executed in the state of Texas and the first woman to be executed since 2017.
“I don’t want my mother to be executed,” John Lucio, her eldest son, who was 17 at the time of Mariah’s death, told lawmakers at a rally Thursday. “I don’t want to lose her.”
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