In 1863, Josefa “Chipita” Rodríguez, a poor Mexican single mom dwelling in Accomplice Texas, was wrongly convicted of killing a white cotton dealer with an ax over $600 in gold. Though the gold was reportedly discovered close to the physique, Chipita was sentenced to demise anyway.
The trial was overseen by a crooked jury, and Chipita by no means obtained a lot of defence and no appeals. She spoke little English, and her final phrases earlier than being hung by the Nueces River had been reportedly, “No soy culpable (I’m not responsible).” She was thought of for years the one lady legally hanged in Texas, earlier than being formally absolved in 1985. Native legend has it that her ghost nonetheless haunts the area.
Quick ahead 160 years, and legal justice advocates say these ghosts haven’t gone anyplace, and Texas is about to wrongly execute one other Latina mom, Melissa Lucio, below one other mistaken sentence.
Lucio was sentenced to demise in 2008 for the homicide of her two-year-old daughter Mariah, whom prosecutors say had been bodily abused. The 53-year-old Lucio has insisted the demise of her daughter was an accident, the results of an undiagnosed damage after Mariah fell down the steps
Now, Lucio, together with a robust group of bipartisan allies, in addition to stars like Kim Kardashian, are rallying behind a clemency petition despatched to Texas governor Greg Abbott in March. Barring quick intervention, Lucio is scheduled to be executed on 27 April.
Ms Kardashian, no stranger to demise penalty activism, known as Mariah’s demise a “tragic accident”, however one which shouldn’t end in one other life being taken.
“It’s tales like Melissa’s that make me converse so loud concerning the demise penalty generally and why it must be banned when harmless individuals are struggling,” Ms Kardashian informed her tens of millions of followers on Tuesday in a sequence of posts urging them to signal a petition calling on the governor to cease the execution.
In accordance with Lucio and her backers, the case that despatched the girl to demise row was flawed from entrance to again, starting together with her supposed confession.
Hours after her daughter was discovered useless, Lucio, a survivor of bodily and sexual abuse for the reason that age of six, was interrogated for 5 hours by a gaggle of armed policemen, who berated her as she claimed her innocence over 100 occasions, in keeping with her clemency software. Lucio, who was grief-stricken, pregnant with twins on the time, and exhausted by an interrogation that stretched to 3am, ultimately appeared to confess to spanking and biting her youngster, which prosecutors alleged proved her guilt in Mariah’s demise.
Specialists assembled by Lucio’s defence say the state of affairs is a basic false confession from a susceptible lady below excessive circumstances, and the demise penalty has a protracted, sordid historical past of being utilized in opposition to individuals proven to have falsely confessed or be wrongfully convicted.
“Mariah’s demise was a tragedy, not a homicide,” Professor Sandra Babcock, one in all Lucio’s attorneys and the director of the Cornell Middle on the Demise Penalty Worldwide, informed The Unbiased. If Texas strikes ahead with the execution, it “reveals that any harmless lady will be executed.”
The issues allegedly didn’t finish there. A coroner inspecting Mariah’s physique was informed earlier than the examination even started that it was a murder. The post-mortem was carried out with a number of the interrogating officers within the room. The examination missed indicators that Mariah had had a fever, was dehydrated, and different indicators according to an unintended head damage and “didn’t evaluation any of Mariah’s medical historical past to search for any rationalization or contributing trigger to her accidents,” in keeping with Dr Janice Ophoven, a pediatric forensic pathologist cited within the clemency software.
Mariah’s household, in addition to a number of jurors within the case, mentioned they don’t imagine the conviction, which occurred after a 2008 trial the place jurors didn’t hear concerning the quite a few occasions Lucio pleaded her innocence, or her related previous as an abuse sufferer. In the course of the case, the state offered no bodily proof, witness testimony, or info from Lucio’s prolonged previous file with state youngster welfare authorities indicating she’d ever been abusive – as a result of there was none.
“I didn’t know that her lengthy historical past of bodily and sexual abuse made her susceptible to falsely confess when subjected to aggressive interrogation techniques on the evening of her daughter’s demise,” Johnny Galvan Jr, a juror within the case, wrote in a latest Houston Chronicle op-ed. “Nobody took us by way of the interrogation to indicate us what number of occasions she asserted her innocence (over 100) or how she repeated the identical phrases the interrogators fed to her. No proof was offered of that and it will have mattered to me.”
A federal appeals court docket in 2019 discovered the trial disadvantaged her of “her constitutional proper to current a significant defence,” however the Supreme Courtroom has declined to intervene after an attraction from the state of Texas.
“She’s harmless,” Sonya Valencia, Lucio’s sister, mentioned at a rally in February. “I wouldn’t be right here if I didn’t imagine in my sister’s innocence.”
The case has attracted bipartisan consideration in usually conservative Texas. Greater than half of the state’s Republican Home of Consultant has joined in calls to cease the execution, both by commuting Lucio’s sentence or delaying it till extra proof will be thought of.
“After we do all the things that we are able to to make sure that an harmless Texan shouldn’t be put to demise by the state, or perhaps a doubtlessly harmless Texan shouldn’t be put to demise by the state … we’re strengthening our legal justice system,” GOP consultant Jeff Leach of Plano, who co-chairs the Home Felony Justice Reform Caucus, mentioned in March.
Others have argued the case and people prefer it present the double customary in opposition to girls within the legal justice system, who will be punished extra harshly for home crimes due to ingrained concepts about gender roles.
“A criminal offense is seen as significantly heinous as a result of it’s dedicated by a girl,” Mary Atwell, professor of legal justice at Radford College, informed The Unbiased, in our in-depth investigation into girls on demise row. “Our societal expectations are that ladies are non-violent, form, and mild so it’s straightforward to play as much as feelings {that a} lady who commits a violent crime shouldn’t be a standard lady, that she is in opposition to the pale and ‘not like us’.”
Melissa Lucio’s husband, additionally liable for Mariah’s care, was not sentenced to demise.
Although Lucio is the only Latina on Texas demise row, that the state is heading in direction of the execution of an individual of color is not any shock, in keeping with specialists.
Texas has a protracted historical past of executing Latinos legally and extra-legally by way of lynchings. The state has additionally executed far and away the most individuals, 573, in trendy US historical past. A disproportionate variety of these on demise row within the state are individuals of color in contrast with the general inhabitants, in keeping with Kristin Houlé Cuellar, govt director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Demise Penalty.
“What we’re seeing, whilst use of the demise penalty and new demise sentences are declining, they continue to be disproportionately imposed on individuals of color,” she informed The Unbiased.
On this context, pardons and profitable clemency purposes are extraordinarily uncommon, she says. Governors George W Bush and Rick Perry every solely granted one such software. Governor Abbott has granted one software for commutation, in 2018, on a uncommon, unanimous suggestion from state parole authorities within the case of Thomas Whitaker, a person who ordered the killing of his household, whose father forgave him and pleaded with officers to not perform the execution.
“Mr Whitaker’s father, who survived the try on his life, passionately opposes the execution of his son,” the governor wrote on the time. “Mr Whitaker’s father insists that he could be victimized once more if the state put to demise his final remaining quick member of the family.
Whether or not the governor and state pardon and parole officers take an analogous view of calls from Lucio’s household stays to be seen.
However the great amount of media consideration across the case, between the Kardashian tweets and the 2020 documentary The State of Texas vs Melissa on Hulu, might have an effect. An analogous marketing campaign helped get Oklahoma inmate Julius Jones, who has lengthy maintained his innocence, off of demise row.
The power may not finish Texas’ generations-long embrace of executions, nevertheless it might deliver extra consideration to the disparities within the state, and shine a lightweight on different upcoming demise sentences which current critical moral questions.
On 21 of April, Texas is about to kill an aged man named Carl Wayne Buntion, who’s 78 years previous. He us set ti be the oldest individual ever executed within the state.
TCADP’s Kristin Houlé Cuellar known as the deliberate execution a “gross spectacle that serves no objective by any means.”
“He’s a frail aged imply with critical well being points he doesn’t pose a risk to anybody,” she mentioned, highlighting the person’s pending clemency request to serve out his dwindling days in jail.
“There are such a lot of individuals impacted by this challenge that aren’t essentially seen or acknowledged,” she added. “On the finish of the day, now we have to recollect executions are an act dedicated by the federal government and there are people who’re carrying these acts out within the title of the individuals. It’s incumbent on the individuals to talk out and lift their voices on all executions.”
Not like with Chipita, the state now has an opportunity to proper a doubtlessly wrongful execution earlier than it’s too late, not centuries after.
The Unbiased and the nonprofit Accountable Enterprise Initiative for Justice (RBIJ) have launched a joint marketing campaign calling for an finish to the demise penalty within the US. The RBIJ has attracted greater than 150 well-known signatories to their Enterprise Leaders Declaration Towards the Demise Penalty – with The Unbiased as the newest on the checklist. We be part of high-profile executives like Ariana Huffington, Fb’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson as a part of this initiative and are making a pledge to focus on the injustices of the demise penalty in our protection.