August 12, 2021<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Yesterday, a coalition of former prosecutors, anti-violence organizations and experts in the field of domestic violence filed an amicus curiae <\/em>brief in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Melissa Lucio, a victim of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence. Melissa was convicted and sentenced to death in connection with the 2007 death of her daughter Mariah. Melissa had no history of assaultive behavior. Her case raises profoundly disturbing questions about the legal system\u2019s treatment of a trauma victim who was sentenced to death for a crime she may not have committed.<\/p>\n The amicus brief explains: \u201cMelissa Lucio was only six years old when she was sexually abused for the first time. For the next two years, her stepfather repeatedly abused her, and Melissa was powerless to stop him. Like many child sex-abuse victims, Melissa became vulnerable to repeated victimization. At the age of sixteen, she married a violent man who abandoned her after she bore five children. Her next partner continued the cycle of violence, punching her in public and beating her at home. By the time she gave birth to her twelfth child, Melissa had experienced homelessness, drug addiction, and severe mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many victims of repeated sexual abuse and domestic violence, Melissa\u2019s life was marked by trauma. The brief explains that \u201c[a]s a result of the violence she endured throughout her life, Melissa suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.\u201d Her symptoms included dissociation\u2014a clinical term that describes how trauma victims lose touch with reality\u2014as well as emotional numbing and avoidance. As one expert observed, Melissa \u201ctends to assume the role of the passive and weak child\u201d when confronted by people stronger than her.<\/p>\n When the police interrogated Melissa, she insisted that she did not kill Mariah. They badgered her, pushing her to accept that she was responsible for her daughter\u2019s death. Texas Ranger Victor Escalon interrogated her until 3 a.m., until, after five hours, Melissa acquiesced and said, \u201cI guess I did it.\u201d<\/p>\n The tactics used by Melissa\u2019s interrogators were roundly condemned in a brief filed yesterday by the Innocence Project and Innocence Network in support of Melissa. They confirm that the tactics used by Escalon and other detectives ran the risk of eliciting a false confession. They explain that the detectives \u201ccoached\u201d Melissa into admitting that she caused Mariah\u2019s injuries while she was \u201cexhausted and anxious, and in the shock of fresh grief.\u201d These same tactics have led to wrongful convictions in other cases involving deaths of children around the country.<\/p>\n At trial, the defense tried to present expert testimony to educate the jury about why Melissa, as a victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence, would be more likely to admit to something she did not do.\u00a0 But the trial court refused to allow the testimony. Instead, it allowed Ranger Escalon to say that he knew Melissa was guilty from the time he first laid eyes on her, because of her slumped posture and downcast eyes. As one of the female judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit observed, \u201cA battered woman was convicted of capital murder because, in a case lacking direct evidence, prosecutors told the jury that, five hours into interrogation, in the middle of the night after the discovery of her dead child, [Melissa] accepted a seasoned interrogator\u2019s suggestion that she was responsible, ultimately agreeing with him that she \u201cdid it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Innocence Project\u2019s brief points out that a \u201csubstantial percentage of women who were wrongfully convicted of killing a child were coerced into falsely confessing. Of the 67 women listed on the National Registry of Exonerations who were exonerated after a murder conviction, over one quarter (17\/67) involved false confessions, and nearly one third (20\/67) involved child victims.\u201d<\/p>\n Melissa Lucio may well be one of those women. Yet she remains on death row, because a deeply divided U.S. Court of Appeals held that the exclusion of the experts\u2019 testimony did not amount to constitutional error. This is a case that demands the Supreme Court\u2019s intervention to prevent an irreversible miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n Sandra Babcock<\/p>\n Read the amicus curiae<\/em> brief filed by former prosecutors, anti-violence organizations & gender based violence experts here:<\/strong> Coalition brief<\/a><\/p>\n