Melissa Lucio - latest: Family look forward to celebrating Mother’s Day after stay of execution

The order from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals means that Wednesday’s execution has now been called off.

However, it does not mean that Melissa Lucio is now free or that she has been exonerated.

Instead, her case will now be sent back to the trial court – the 138th Judicial District Court of Cameron County – to consider the new evidence put forward in the case which supports her claim of innocence.

It is not clear when the lower court will begin reviewing the case.

Lucio’s attorney told The Independent last week that if a stay was granted, the next step for her legal team would be to ask for an evidentiary hearing to present the new evidence.

There, they would ask for Lucio to be granted a new trial.

US Rep Joaquin Castro joined in the celebrations that Melissa Lucio’s looming execution has been halted.

The congressman, who represents Texas’s 20th congressional district, said there was “strong evidence” of Lucio’s innocence.

“I’m glad that Melissa Lucio’s execution has been stayed! There’s strong evidence that she did not commit the crime she was charged with,” he tweeted.

Sandra Babcock, the director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and one of Melissa Lucio’s attorneys, said Monday’s decision from the Texas appeals court showed the “Melissa’s life matters”.

“The Court’s decision paves the way for Melissa to present evidence of her innocence that should have been heard by the jury that condemned her to death fourteen years ago,” she said in a statement.

“As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, and now locked away for these past 15 years, Melissa’s voice and experiences have never been valued.

“The Court’s decision signals its willingness to finally hear Melissa’s side of the story. If the district court hears all the evidence of Melissa’s innocence, and the gender bias that infected the police investigation and prosecution, we are confident she will return home to her family.”

Supporters of Melissa Lucio who had gathered at the state Capitol on Monday to push for her death sentence to be halted were seen celebrating news that she had been granted a stay of execution.

The group, dressed in t-shirts reading “Free Melissa Lucio”, welcomed the decision by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas to stop her execution and order a lower court to review the new evidence in the case.

A Republican state lawmaker has spoken out about the moment Melissa Lucio learned her life was to be saved.

State Rep Jeff Leach told The Texas Tribune he told Lucio over the phone that the Texas appeals court had granted her a stay of execution.

The mother-of-14 was overcome with emotion and laughed through tears, he said.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “That is wonderful... Oh thank you, God.”

Rep Leach has become one of the most vocal supporters of Lucio in recent weeks and – in partnership with Democratic Rep Joe Moody – has led a bipartisan group of 83 state representatives in calls to stop her execution.

Last week, Rep Leach spoke out about the case saying that even “pro-life conservatives” who are in favour of the death penalty and believe capital punishment is “a God-ordained institution” must recognise the state has “royally messed it up” in Lucio’s case.

Earlier this month, seven of the lawmakers visited Lucio on death row at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville and prayed with her.

A bipartisan group of 20 members of the Texas Senate also publicly opposed Lucio’s execution.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers even includes members who are proponents of the death penalty.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has declined to grant Melissa Lucio clemency after the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas issued a stay of execution.

The parole board released a brief, one-line statement on Monday afternoon announcing its decision.

“Based on a stay of execution issued by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas on April 25, 2022 the Board of Pardons and Paroles will not be making a clemency recommendation at this time,” the statement read.

The statement did not provide any other details about the decision.

It is not clear if the outcome would have been different had a stay not been issued.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had until 1.30pm local time on Monday to recommend whether Lucio’s death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment, if she should be granted a 120-day execution reprieve or if the execution should go ahead as planned.

The recommendations would have been sent to Republican Governor Greg Abbott who would then have the power to decide whether or not to act on them.

The Catholic nun who wrote the iconic book Dead Man Walking has welcomed the news that Melissa Lucio has been granted a stay of execution after she previously voiced her support for the Texan mother-of-14.

Sister Helen Prejean told her 174,000 followers on Twitter that Lucio’s case was headed back to the trial court, celebrating with an “alleluia”.

“NEWS: Melissa Lucio was granted a stay of execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals,” she tweeted.

“The April 27th execution date is canceled and Melissa’s case will be sent back to the Cameron County trial court for consideration of four claims. Alleluia!”

Sister Helen joined calls to halt Lucio’s execution earlier this month saying that “psychological pressure and coercion” led the grieving mother. to “admit to things that never happened”

On 6 April, Sister Helen shared an op-ed written by false confession expert Gisli H. Gudjonsson for The Independent about Lucio’s case.

She wrote: “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.”

On April 11, Sister Helen shared more details of Lucio’s case with her followers describing the “tragic accident” that led to her daughter’s death and the “five hours of coercion” that caused her to make a “false confession”.

“Melissa Lucio’s daughter, Mariah, died in a tragic accident. Within hours, police took Melissa into a small room. They yelled at her, threatened her, and showed her photos of Mariah’s body. After five hours of coercion, Melissa made a false confession,” she tweeted.

“Detectives shouted at Melissa, berated her for being a neglectful mother, and implied that if Mariah’s death was not her fault then it had to have been one of her other children. They promised to help her and said they would let her attend Mariah’s funeral if she confessed.

“The purpose of the interrogation was not to get to the truth. The investigators were only interested in using psychological pressure and manipulation to obtain evidence that supported their pre-conceived theories. This type of tunnel vision is very dangerous in criminal cases.”

Sister Helen famously penned the 1994 book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States after becoming the spiritual advisor to two men on death row - Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie - in the 1980s. She witnessed the executions of both men.

Following their deaths - and at a time when national support for the death penalty was at an all-time high - the Catholic nun released her book, sparking a nationwide debate about capital punishment.

The book famously inspired a Hollywood movie of the same name starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Over the last few decades, Sister Helen has campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty and pushed the Catholic Church to condemn the death penalty in all circumstances.

Melissa Lucio has been granted an 11th-hour stay of execution, just 48 hours before she was about to be put to death for a crime she says she didn’t commit.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay of execution early on Monday afternoon and ordered the 138th Judicial District Court of Cameron Country to consider new evidence in her case after multiple experts cast doubt on her 2008 conviction and calls to save her mounted from human rights advocates, celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Amanda Knox, and both Republican and Democratic state lawmakers.

Lucio, who has spent the last 14 years on death row for the 2007 murder of her daughter Mariah, thanked God for saving her life and paid tribute to her late child who she said “is in my heart today and always”.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story:

Kim Kardashian has celebrated the decision to temporarily call off the imminent execution of Melissa Lucio, telling her 7.2m followers it is the “best news ever”.

Kardashian spoke out earlier this month in support of Lucio and raising awareness of the “unresolved questions” surrounding her conviction and death sentence.

On Monday, she welcomed news that she had been granted a last-minute stay of execution by the Texas appeals court.

“Best news ever! Melissa Lucio has been on death row for over 14 years for her daughter’s death that was a tragic accident,” she tweeted.

“She is getting a new trial on her case and has been granted a stay of execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.”

The Independent’s Josh Marcus has the full story:

The Texas appeals court agreed with Melissa Lucio’s legal team on four claims made in the habeas application.

In the order granting Lucio a stay of execution, the appeals court said four of the nine claims raised in the application should be reviewed by the courts.

These claims are: “for the State’s use of false testimony, no juror would have convicted her; “previously unavailable scientific evidence would preclude her conviction”; “she is actually innocent”; and that “the State suppressed favorable, material evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland”.

Lucio’s legal team had filed a 242-page application asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to grant a stay of execution back on 15 April.