New evidence has been presented in the case of Melissa Lucio in the hopes of stopping her execution scheduled to take place at the end of this month, according to a report.
Lucio, 53, was charged with the murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah Lucio, in 2007, after a comment she made during the investigation, despite her repeatedly denying fatally beating the girl during questioning.
The questioning lasted for hours, and after constantly being pressed, Lucio answered, "I guess I did it," when she was asked if she had been responsible for some of her daughter's injuries.
Defense attorneys argue this tainted the investigation and prosecutors took her response as a murder confession, leading to her capital murder conviction. However, her lawyers say that the statement was taken the wrong way.
They said that the 2-year-old had fallen down a flight of stairs outside the family's apartment in South Texas and that the injuries she incurred from the fall caused her death.
Now, Lucio's lawyers are hopeful that new evidence and growing public support following a 2020 documentary on the case will persuade the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Abbott to stop her execution.
Her lawyers claim that the jurors never heard forensic evidence that would have shed more light on Mariah's various injuries from her fall.
Along with the forensic evidence, Lucio's lawyers also claim that she was not allowed to show evidence that would have questioned the validity of her confession.
One of Lucio's attorneys, Vanessa Potkin, who works with the Innocence Project, shared with the Associated Press that "Mariah's death was a tragedy, not a murder."
"It would be an absolutely devastating message for this execution to go forward. It would send a message that innocence doesn't matter," Potkin told the AP.
Lucio had temporarily lost custody of her children while she had used drugs, but her lawyers said that she was a loving mother who worked to stay clean for her kids. Lucio has 14 children and was pregnant with the youngest two when Mariah died.
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However, the Texas Attorney General's Office continues to point to this and evidence of Mariah's injuries while maintaining her guilt.
The office said that the girl had endured the "absolute worst" case of child abuse her emergency room doctor had seen in three decades.
"Lucio still advances no evidence that is reliable and supportive of her acquittal," the office wrote in court documents last month.
The Cameron County District Attorney's Office prosecuted Lucio and declined a request for comment from the AP.
Abbott could grant a one-time 30-day reprieve and clemency if a majority of the parole board recommends it.
Last month 83 Texas House members wrote a letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Abbott saying her death would be a "miscarriage of justice."
Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach signed the letter and shared his concern over Lucio's death penalty being someone who supports the form of punishment.
"As a conservative Republican myself, who has long been a supporter of the death penalty in the most heinous cases ... I have never seen a more troubling case than the case of Melissa Lucio," Leach said.
The board will vote on Lucio's clemency petition two days before he scheduled execution, according to the AP.
Lucio's execution date is set for April 27, and if it isn't stopped, she will be the first Latina executed by Texas and the first woman since 2014.
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