Appeals court delays Texas execution of Melissa Lucio

TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has delayed the execution of Melissa Lucio so a lower court can review her case.  

The execution stay was announced minutes before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had been set to consider her clemency application to either commute her death sentence or grant her a 120-day reprieve.

Allen State Representative Jeff Leach is the one who told her the news.

"She's going to get her new day in court. She's going to have assistance of council. She's going to be tried in front of a jury of her peers. And I believe in all my heart — based on what I know right — know she's going to be deemed innocent of this crime," Leach said.

Family and advocates of Lucio fought to stop her execution, arguing she was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah in 2007.

Family friend Carmen Ayala said she was planning for a different outcome.

"My phone started blowing up and I looked down there and I was like, 'Oh my God. We got a stay of execution,'" Ayala said. "It's not a complete win, but it's not a loss. It does buy us time to make the light at the end of the tunnel a little bit brighter. We are hopeful that once everyone starts looking back at the case and seeing that it was an accident, that she is able to go home."

The scheduled execution also garnered the attention of celebrity Kim Kardashian.  

The reality star showed support for Lucio on Twitter earlier this month, saying "I recently just read about the case of Melissa Lucio and wanted to share her story with you. She has been on death row for over 14 years for her daughter's death that was a tragic accident."

Lawyers for Lucio say the murder never happened and that there is forensic evidence proving her daughter's injuries were actually caused by a fall down a flight of stairs outside the family's apartment in Harlingen, Texas, days before her death.

Kardashian continued to tweet that "Mariah fell down a flight of stairs and two days later passed away while taking a nap. After she called for help, she was taken into custody by the police. Melissa is a survivor of abuse and domestic violence herself and after being interrogated for hours and falsely pleaded guilty. She wanted the interrogation to end, but police made her words out to be a confession."

She has since commented on the news of Lucio's stay on Twitter.

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International were among the many groups applying pressure on the state to reconsider her execution, which was scheduled for April 27. But perhaps the most powerful of the voices calling for her life to be spared came from her oldest son John. 

The 32-year-old son of the convicted murderer attended a screening of the documentary "The State of Texas vs Melissa Lucio" at Southern Methodist University earlier this month.

The documentary raises doubts about whether the mother of 14 actually killed her toddler.

Her son says Lucio was a drug addict and a domestic violence victim, but not a killer. 

"To be exact, it was crack cocaine that she was abusing. She was bad on it," he said, admitting his mother was neglectful. Though he wasn't around when Mariah died, John believes his mother's story that his sister fell down a flight of stairs.

"She had a lot of accidents, a lot of falls, which is something they [CPS] never shared with my mother," he said.

John, along with his mother's attorneys, say her capital murder conviction was based on an unreliable and coerced confession that was the result of relentless questioning and her long history of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. They say Lucio wasn't allowed to present evidence questioning the validity of her confession.

Her lawyers also contend that unscientific and false evidence misled jurors into believing Mariah's injuries only could have been caused by physical abuse and not by medical complications from a severe fall.

Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, whose office prosecuted the case, has said he disagrees with Lucio's lawyers' claims that new evidence would exonerate her. Prosecutors say Lucio had a history of drug abuse and at times had lost custody of some of her 14 children.

However, defense private investigator LinMarie Garsee said she was ecstatic to hear the news.

"Absolutely nowhere did I learn in anyway that she had been abusive in any manner — negligent probably — but abusive? Absolutely not," Garsee said. "I've been on Melissa's team since day one after I read documents and kept looking at things. I'm just totally ecstatic."

Criminal Defense Attorney and former prosecutor Toby Shook said this is a big victory for the defense.

"This type of motion rarely gets granted," Shook said. "The ruling today will delay the case for quite some time. There has to be time to get a hearing set and for the lawyers to be prepared, and then it will take some time for the judge to issue rulings and then those will go back to the Court of Criminal Appeals. So this whole process could take a year or more."

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