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

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:

Despite the death penalty existing in more than 20 US states, it is rare for a woman to be executed, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that opposes capital punishment.

Women have accounted for only 3.6 per cent of the more than 16,000 confirmed executions dating back to the colonial period in the 1600s, according to the group’s data.  There have been 17 women executed since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the group’s data.

Texas has put more women to death — six — than any other state. Oklahoma is next, with three, and Florida has executed two. The federal government has executed one woman since 1976.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Kim Kardashian and Amanda Knox are among the most famous faces to have called for Texas state officials to stop Melissa Lucio’s execution on Wednesday.

Ms Kardashian, an advocate for criminal justice reform, recently shared a tweet in support of the 53-year-old who could become the first Latina and woman executed in Texas since 2014.

Ms Know, who was famously acquitted of murdering a British student in Italy, has also railed behind Texas law makers, death penalty opponents, and Ms Lucio’s friends and family.

Rachel Sharp has more

More than half of Texas’s Senate have called on state officials to stop the controversial execution of Melissa Lucio, which is set for Wednesday. The Texas House has also called for the state to stop the execution of the first Latina woman in the state.

Writing in a letter sent to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this month, the lawmakers said granting her clemency was “an opportunity to prevent a miscarriage of justice that would undermine public trust in our legal system” and that “Ms Lucio’s case is one that gives even proponents of the death penalty pause”.

The parole board can recommend governor Greg Abbott stop the execution. He is expected to consider the body’s decision later on Monday.

Josh Marcus reports

Melissa Lucio’s lawyers say new evidence shows that injuries sustained by her two-year-old daughter in 2007, including a blow to the head, were allegedly caused by a fall down a steep staircase. “I knew that what I was accused of doing was not true,” Ms Lucio wrote in a recent letter to Texas lawmakers. “Children have always been my world and although my choices in life were not good I would have never hurt any of my children in such a way”.

Her lawyers also say her murder conviction was based on an unreliable and coerced confession and that jurors were mislead into believing her daughter’s injuries only could have been caused by physical abuse and not by medical complications from a severe fall. 

Prosecutors in Texas’s Cameron County have largely maintained that the child was the victim of child abuse, however. District Attorney Luis Saenz recently suggested he welcomed a reevalutation of the case.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Speaking at a vigil held on Friday for Melissa Lucio in San Juan, Texas, her sister Sonya Alvarez told KHOU-TV: “We’re so grateful. We couldn’t carry this alone... I have the faith that our sister is going to come home”.

Friends and family gathered at the Basilica Of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle National Shrine for the vigil, which is among many in support of Ms Lucio.

Esperanza “Hope” Trevino, the 77-year-old mother of Ms Lucio, was pictured at the vigil praying for her daughter, who would become the first Latina to be executed in Texas and the first women elected in the state since 2014 if a last minute appeal fails.