Activists are calling for authorities in Texas to reconsider the death penalty of Latina death row prisoner Melissa Lucio ahead of her scheduled execution by lethal injection on April 27.
Lucio, who was convicted in the 2007 killing of her 2-year-old daughter, has maintained her innocence, saying in a 2020 Hulu documentary that interrogators coerced her into making a false confession.
Supporters, including a group of 83 bipartisan Texas lawmakers and Kim Kardashian, are urging the governor to commute Lucio's sentence. Kardashian posted on Twitter Wednesday to bring awareness to the case — sharing a letter to lawmakers signed by Lucio's 13 surviving children asking for her life to be spared.
"So heartbreaking to read this letter from Melissa Lucio's children begging for the state not to kill their mother. There are so many unresolved questions surrounding this case and the evidence that was used to convict her," said Kardashian, who has been an advocate for criminal justice reform.
Lucio was convicted of capital murder of her infant daughter, Mariah, in August 2008. Her family maintains that Mariah died after an accidental fall down a staircase.
One juror, Johnny Galvan Jr, wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle on April 3, saying he felt "deep regret" after "learning about all the things we jurors were never told when we held Lucio's life in our hands."
If lawmakers do not intervene before April 27, Lucio will become the first Latina to be executed in the state of Texas and the first woman to be executed since 2017.
"I don't want my mom to be executed," John Lucio, her eldest son, who was 17 at the time of Mariah's death, told lawmakers during a rally Thursday. "I don't want to lose her."
