Thread by @Edourdooo

» In Polarized #Texas, Rare Agreement: #Hispanic Mother, Melissa Lucio, Should Not Be Executed - The New York Times nytimes.com/2022/04/22/us/…

Lucio’s case has brought Democratic and Republican lawmakers together in mutual outcry.

Scores of legislators have called for clemency or at least a reprieve, including those who are ordinarily vigorous backers of the death penalty.

Lucio struggled to provide for her large family. At the time of Mariah’s death, she was pregnant with twins and already had 12 children.

She had part-time work as a home health aide, her lawyers said, but struggled with drug addiction and often relied on soup kitchens for food.

Lucio, now 53, was convicted in large part, her attorneys argue, on the basis of a coerced "confession" she gave authorities in an "aggressive" late night interrogation the same night her daughter died.

Lucio's children are "united in asking that their mother not be executed," Tivon Schardl, one of Lucio's attorneys, told reporters, "that the pain that they've been suffering all these years, that those wounds be allowed to heal and not be torn open by the state of Texas."

Lucio herself was sexually assaulted, abused and raped by her mother's partners and others during her childhood, according to her petition. She continued to suffer abuse at the hands of her own partners.

Texas has executed its oldest death row inmate by way of lethal injection.

Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, was put to death just before 6.40pm on Thursday, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Buntion was convicted of fatally shooting a 37-year-old Houston police motorcycle officer, James Irby, after a 1990 traffic stop.

During the fatal stop, Buntion shot the 19-year police veteran in the head and shot him twice more in the back once he fell to the ground.

As the 27 April execution date approaches, concern that an innocent woman is about to be sent to the death chamber has reached fever pitch.

At trial, one of the Texas rangers who was first on the scene told the jury that he had found Lucio with her head down, making no eye contact and showing no apparent concern about Mariah.

The medical examiner who carried out the autopsy, Dr. Norma Farley, showed a similar willingness to prejudge Lucio’s guilt. In her testimony, Farley made several critical statements that have been shown to be scientifically inaccurate.

Both the court of criminal appeals in Austin, Texas, and the state’s board of pardons are considering Lucio’s plea. A stay of execution is possible, given the many glaring flaws in how she came to be put on death row.