DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Despite questions about the murder conviction and pleas for mercy, there’s no sign anything will stop the execution of the first Hispanic female in Texas.
Human rights organizations like Amnesty International are among many groups applying pressure on the state to reconsider this scheduled execution, but perhaps the most powerful of the voices calling for Melissa Lucio’s life to be spared comes from her oldest son John.
“I feel scared. I felt extremely scared. I still am a little bit nervous.” John Lucio is talking about the the 18 days between now and the execution date set for his mother Melissa. “She wrote me a letter telling me she was not doing well, we got to bring her some good news.”
The 32-year-old son of the convicted murderer attended a screening on the SMU campus of the documentary “The State of Texas vs Melissa Lucio.”
It raises doubts about whether the mother of 14 children murdered her two-year-old daughter Mariah in 2007.
Her son says Lucio was a drug addict and a domestic violence victim, but not a killer. “To be exact, it was crack cocaine that she was abusing. She was bad on it.”
John admits Lucio was neglectful. “That was the problem. There was no discipline in our family.”
He wasn’t around when Mariah died, but he believes his mother’s story that his sister fell down a flight of stairs outside the family’s home in Harlingen only three months after she was in CPS custody.
“She had a lot of accidents, a lot of falls, which is something they [CPS] never shared with my mother,” John said.
He believes his mother’s reluctant confession after being interrogated for five hours while pregnant was coerced.
Despite rallies like one yesterday outside Dallas City Hall calling on state officials and the governor to grant a new trial or at least commute Lucio’s sentence to life, the April 27th execution still looms.
Republican and Democratic state lawmakers in support of clemency met with the 53-year-old this week at her prison in Gatesville.
John says his mother has made one request that he has so far refused.
“She asked me to prepare for funeral services but it’s something I have not done because I still have hope and believe.”