Melissa Lucio is placed under close surveillance ahead of her scheduled execution on April 27 in the US.

The Mexican-American melissa lucio She was placed under close guard at Mountainview Jail in Texasa week before the date of his execution for the crime of having killed his daughter, an accusation that his lawyers consider “false”.

“Melissa has been put on what they call suicide watch,” Sandra Babcock, one of his lawyers, told Efe today, explaining that it is a prison protocol that is activated a week before the date of execution, scheduled for next Wednesday.

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“They are watching her because the prison believes that anyone in that situation is at risk of committing suicide because psychologically it is very difficult,” added Babcock who works at Cornell’s Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

In 2008, this 53-year-old woman became the first Latina sentenced to death in Texas. after a trial in which The Prosecutor’s Office argued that the defendant killed her daughter with a beating, while she alleged that the little girl, who had malformations in her legs, fell down the long and old staircase of her house in the town of Harlingen in an unguarded moment.

THE TORTURE OF WAITING FOR DEATH

Babcock, who last night spoke with Melissadenounced that is undergoing “torture” and that his situation on death row is now “even more difficult, because he is more and more aware that the execution date is approaching and he does not know what is going to happen.”

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“Should you prepare to die or should you look forward to life? We don’t have any way of telling him what’s going to happen, because we don’t have the power to make a decision.”he added in an interview via Zoom.

In this undated photo, Melissa Lucio, who is on death row in Texas, holds one of her sons, John. (Photo courtesy of Melissa Lucio’s family via AP).

However, The lawyer indicated that Melissa is a person who always “tries to see the positive side of life” and that last night she spoke with her about her faith.

“She is very encouraged by all the support she has received, but she cares a lot about her children. She is really worried about what could happen to them if she was executed.”, declared Babcock, who indicated that Lucio is very upset with the prison for the constant surveillance to which she is now subjected.

Like the rest of his team of lawyers and many civil organizations that have dealt with Lucio’s case, Babcock is convinced that Lucio is innocent and that “her daughter’s death was not a homicide, but an accident.”

THE JUDICIAL AND POLITICAL ROAD TO SAVE LUCIO

His team of lawyers presented last Friday a request “of more than two hundred pages, plus eight hundred pages of evidence” to the court that provides expert statements and “new evidence that no one had seen before.”

“Now we are waiting for the court to decide whether to stay the execution. Doing so would send the case to a court that could look at the new evidence, which we hope, because that would be the first step in getting Melissa a new trial.”he underlined.

However, the decision of this court could be delayed until the day of the execution, warned Babcock.

In addition to the judicial route, Lucio’s case has also been placed in the hands of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroleswhich, according to Babcock, will decide on Monday whether to recommend that the Latin American’s sentence be commuted to a lesser sentence or that her execution be postponed for 120 days.

Once the Board makes a decision and if the judicial route is exhausted, the governor of Texas, Republican Gregg Abbott, will have to make a final decisionwhich according to the togada might not occur until hours before the execution.

But Babcock, despite admitting that they have no guarantees, is optimistic that the case will succeed.

“We believe that the courts now have serious reasons before them to stay the execution. Anyone who watches this case for more than 10 minutes can see that there are serious questions about the integrity of the evidence used to convict Melissa. It shouldn’t take them long to decide they should stop the execution,” she concluded.

Source: Elcomercio