Melissa Lucio - latest: Attorneys make last-ditch bid with DA to stop execution as parole board mulls clemency

Melissa Lucio’s attorneys have made a last-ditch bid to Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz asking him to withdraw her execution date, pointing to his own promise under oath to save the Hispanic mother-of-14’s life.

On Monday morning, Lucio’s legal team filed an additional supplement to a previous motion asking the DA to withdraw the order setting the 53-year-old’s execution date.

Mr Saenz requested Lucio’s death warrant and execution date and so he also has the power to withdraw the date at any time.

Yet, he has given mixed messages about whether or not he will step in and stop the execution.

Last week, during a contentious hearing led by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, Mr Saenz initially refused to take any action to stop Lucio’s execution.

But, later in the hearing, Mr Saenz relented saying that he believes the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will issue a stay and that, if it doesn’t, he will.

“If defendant Lucio does not get a stay by a certain day, then I will do what I have to do and stop it,” he said.

Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach warned that he would hold the prosecutor to his promise saying “we got it on tape”.

Now – just 48 hours until Lucio will be put to death – Mr Saenz is yet to take any action to halt the execution.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story:

With two days to go until Melissa Lucio will be executed in Texas for a crime she says she didn’t commit, a growing number of famous faces have joined the fight to save her life.

Kim Kardashian drew national – and even global – attention to Lucio’s plight in early April by tweeting about the case to her 72.1m followers.

On 7 April, she shared a “heartbreaking” letter signed by the Texan mother’s children begging for her life to be saved and told her followers that there are many “unresolved questions” around Lucio’s case.

Amanda Knox has also joined in calls to stop Lucio’s execution, comparing the conviction of the mother of 14 for the murder of her two-year-old daughter Mariah to her own wrongful conviction in Italy for the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story:

Speaking after a “Call to Action” day on Saturday for Melissa Lucio, one of her sons told News 4 he was overwhelmed by the support for his mother.

“It means a lot to me that people are supporting my mom, sharing her story and speaking out on this injustice,” said Bobby Alvarez. “Knowing her date is four days away is very emotional. Very hard to grasp knowing my moms days are limited.”

Reports suggested as many as 16 rallies were held for Ms Lucio and her appeal for clemency ahead of a Wednesday execution date on Saturday, with the rallies stretching from San Antonio to Boston.

Asked about Melissa Lucio’s case by The Independent this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was “nothing to predict” regarding the 53-year-old and her appeals for clemency.

Pointing to US President Joe Biden’s public position on the death penalty, Ms Psaki said:“Well, you know the president’s position and view on the death penalty, and there’s an ongoing review at the Department of Justice, at a federal level, this is obviously at a state level. I don’t have anything to predict beyond that.”

The remarks came as campaigners and Texas lawmakers called on Texas’s governor Greg Abbott to step-in and grant Ms Lucio a reprieve or a commuted sentence. Her lawyers say she was unfairly tried in 2008 for the death of her two-year-old daughter.

Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who has spent decades campaigning for the death penalty to be abolished, wrote on social media that “psychological pressure and coercion” led MS Lucio to “admit to things that never happened”.

The author of the book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, tweeted that “Melissa Lucio was interrogated by investigators trained to extract confessions, not to find the truth”.

“When psychological pressure and coercion are applied with clinical precision, people buckle and admit to things that never happened,” she continued, in comments echoing the 53-year-old’s lawyers.

As Rachel Sharp writes, Sister Prejean has previously witnessed the executions of two death row inmates who she spiritually advised in the 1980s:

Among the reasons why lawyers for Melissa Lucio and campaigners have called for her sentence to be commuted is the trial that lead to her being put on death row more than a decade go.

Armando Villalobos, the district attorney when Ms Lucio was convicted in 2008, allegedly pushed for a conviction of the mother to help his reelection bid, her lawyers now say.

In 2014, Villalobos was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for a bribery scheme related to offering favorable prosecutorial decisions, The Associated Press reported.

Ms Lucio’s lawyers say new evidence also shows that her two-year-old daughter did not die of abuse, as argued by prosecutors, but rather an injury. She was also not able to show evidence against her “unreliable and coerced” confession, according to her lawyers.

Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz told a hearing earlier this month that Melissa Lucio could get a stay of execution, which would temporarily delay the sentence.

Mr Saenz, whose office prosecuted the case following Ms Lucio’s daughter’s death in 2007, also aid he believed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals would stop the execution, saying: “If defendant Lucio does not get a stay by a certain day, then I will do what I have to do and stop it.”

On Monday, the Texas parole board is expected to decide whether or not it recommends governor Greg Abbott stops the execution planned for Wednesday.

Johanna Chisholm has more

The community of Brownsville, Texas, was among those across the US to hold a vigil in support of halting the execution of a Melissa Lucio, of Harlingen.

At a vigil in San Juan, Texas, on Friday – one woman holding a “free Melissa Lucio” sign told reporters she had travelled from Chicago to show her support for the 53-year-old and her family.

Kim Kardashian used Twitter this month to call Melissa Lucio’s daughter’s death a “tragic accident”, but one that shouldn’t result in another life being taken.

“It’s stories like Melissa’s that make me speak so loud about the death penalty in general and why it should be banned when innocent people are suffering,” Ms Kardashian told her millions of followers, as Josh Marcus reports:

Sabrina Van Tassel, the director of the acclaimed 2020 documentary The State of Texas vs Melissa, told The Independent this month: “Melissa would never be where she’s at if she wasn’t a poor Hispanic woman. That’s a fact”.

Her film sought to show the many red flags in the prosecution that were always in plain sight, and how a second chance can be a rare, radical change in the status quo, as Josh Marcus reports: