30 March 2022 :
Bipartisan Majority of Texas House of Representatives Calls for Clemency for Melissa Lucio, Facing Execution for Likely Accidental Death of Daughter
The Texas House of Representatives is composed of 150 members, each elected for a two-year term. The actual composition is 85 Republican and 65 Democratic.
Nearly 90 members of the Texas House of Representatives from across the ideological spectrum have issued a bipartisan call for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to grant clemency to death-row prisoner Melissa Lucio.
In a news conference in the state capitol on March 24, 2022, State Rep. Jeff Leach (R), co-chair of the House’s bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, announced that 81 House members had signed a letter urging Governor Abbott and the pardons board to spare Lucio, who is scheduled to be executed April 27. By the end of the news conference, six more Republican House members had asked to sign on the letter, Leach said.
Lucio was sentenced to death in Cameron County, Texas in 2008 on charges that she murdered her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. Lucio’s legal team filed a clemency petition with the pardons board on March 22, 2022, arguing that new expert reviews of the evidence in her case demonstrate that the toddler died from an accidental fall down steep stairs at the family’s new home. The petition included statements of support from jurors, forensic and medical experts, anti-domestic violence activists, religious leaders, exonerees, and Lucio’s siblings and children.
