Speaker 1: Melissa Lucio grew up poor in South Texas, a victim
Speaker 1: of years of sexual abuse from multiple offenders in the home.
Speaker 1: At age sixteen, she married her first boyfriend to escape
Speaker 1: tying up her self worth and being a mother, so
Speaker 1: much so that she eventually had fourteen children. The final
Speaker 1: two were twins that Melissa delivered behind bars after having
Speaker 1: been accused of allegedly murdering the next youngest sibling, two
Speaker 1: year old Mariah, on February fifteenth, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Mariah's older siblings witnessed her take a tumble down the stairs.
Speaker 1: Lethargy and a lack of appetite were hoped to be
Speaker 1: symptoms of something less severe than head trauma, but when
Speaker 1: she became unresponsive on February seventeenth, they called the ms.
Speaker 1: Mariah passed away, and an aggressive interrogation ensued, resulting in
Speaker 1: an admission to an overarching sense of guilt that most
Speaker 1: any mother would feel. The usual bruising from rough play
Speaker 1: with her siblings was later used to support the state's
Speaker 1: theory of a pattern of abuse. Melissa's conviction would also
Speaker 1: go a long way to shore up a tough on
Speaker 1: crime image for a corrupt district attorney embroiled in a
Speaker 1: bribery scandal during an election year, Defying logic and the
Speaker 1: scientific method, the state's forensic pathologists ruled out Maria's fall
Speaker 1: down the stairs as the cause of the failed head trauma. Further,
Speaker 1: the children who witnessed the accident and denied the pattern
Speaker 1: of abuse were not called to testify. After trial, Melissa's
Speaker 1: defense attorney was immediately hired to the DA's office with
Speaker 1: a bump and pay. The DA got reelected, but was
Speaker 1: later prosecuted by the FBI, and Melissa is still on
Speaker 1: death row. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about the case of Melissa Lucio, an innocent woman on
Speaker 1: death row in Texas. Today. To tell this incredible, harrowing
Speaker 1: and urgent story, we have with us Sabrina van Tassel.
Speaker 1: Sabrina is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist who
Speaker 1: has made forty five films and I think maybe it
Speaker 1: was all a build up to this one. Sabrina, welcome
Speaker 1: Toronful Conviction. Thank you so much, and with her is
Speaker 1: a badass Texas attorney named Margaret Schmucker, and Margaret has
Speaker 1: been a fierce advocate for Melissa as her habeas attorney. Margaret,
Speaker 1: welcome toronful conviction.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And thank you both for being here. So over the
Speaker 1: past few years, Sabrina has visited Melissa Lucio on death
Speaker 1: row in Texas, where she's been stuck since two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. And throughout this episode you're going to hear
Speaker 1: excerpts from those interviews. You can also see in here
Speaker 1: in Sabrina's film The State of Texas Versus Melissa. And
Speaker 1: during those interviews, Melissa really was very candid with you
Speaker 1: about her life, which was just beyond tragic from the
Speaker 1: very beginning.
Speaker 3: So Melissa was born in Houston. Her father left the
Speaker 3: mom when she was three months old, and they moved
Speaker 3: to Harlingen, Texas, and the mother kept being, you know,
Speaker 3: with different boyfriends. They were all abusive.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 5: Molested by my mother's boyfriend. I must have been about
Speaker 5: seven years old when the abuse started. I grew up
Speaker 5: not really loved because of this incident. I continued to
Speaker 5: be molested by other family members. I just allowed myself
Speaker 5: to be a victim over and over again.
Speaker 3: She did tell her mother that the boyfriend was actually
Speaker 3: abusing her, and the mother basically did not believe her,
Speaker 3: and then she basically allowed herself to be a victim
Speaker 3: to other men in the family. And once she was
Speaker 3: about fifteen years old, the first boyfriend that she got
Speaker 3: involved with she married, and she started having a family
Speaker 3: right after. By the age of twenty two, she already
Speaker 3: had five children. Her husband introduced her to drugs, and
Speaker 3: one day the husband just left her, and so all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, she's twenty two and she has five children,
Speaker 3: and she meets her other partner, Robert Alvarez, and together
Speaker 3: they're going to have nine other children, right.
Speaker 1: And two of those nine were twins that Melissa delivered
Speaker 1: in jail while she was being held for the alleged
Speaker 1: murder of her youngest child at that time, Riah. So
Speaker 1: before Mariah died, there were five from the first guy
Speaker 1: and seven from Robert Alvarez, for a total of twelve.
Speaker 1: Some of them were still really little, some of them
Speaker 1: were teenagers. Some of them had even moved out by
Speaker 1: the time Febuary two thousand and seven year olds around,
Speaker 1: which is when this incident happened. But before that they
Speaker 1: were all living in desperate, desperate poverty and relying on
Speaker 1: a charity called Loaves and Fishes for most of their meals.
Speaker 1: Melissa and robert had very unpredictable schedules because they were
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of odd jobs trying to support the
Speaker 1: family and to keep up with all of it, or
Speaker 1: to I don't know, maybe forget their troubles. Melissa and
Speaker 1: Robert were using drugs out of the sight of the children,
Speaker 1: but regrettably also while she was pregnant with Mariah.
Speaker 2: When Melissa had Mariah, the seventh child with Roberta Alvarez,
Speaker 2: she was born with drugs in her system, and so
Speaker 2: she was taken from Melissa or mister Albarez by CPS
Speaker 2: Child Protective Services, along with all of the other kids
Speaker 2: that were in the home at that time, and they
Speaker 2: were placed in foster care. They were fairly well split up.
Speaker 2: That continued for so years, and Melissa and Roberta were
Speaker 2: given supervised visits with Child Protective Services with the kids,
Speaker 2: and then finally, when Mariah's about two years old, over Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: CPS returned the seven children, who were still minors at
Speaker 2: the time, back into the home of Melissa and Roberta.
Speaker 2: And so it is from that point until the point
Speaker 2: where Mariah dies, where there's nine children in the home
Speaker 2: in this small second story apartment with a rickety, scary
Speaker 2: stairwell on the exterior, which is the access point right.
Speaker 1: And to make this accent even more likely to happen,
Speaker 1: Mariah had this is important, a physical impairment as well.
Speaker 1: One of her feet was turned in slightly, which caused
Speaker 1: her to be unstable and to fall downstairs occasionally, as
Speaker 1: was documented while she was in foster care. But that's
Speaker 1: not all that was documented in those Child Protective Services reports.
Speaker 1: There was a tremendous amount of inter sibling violence while
Speaker 1: in foster care and when they were living at home,
Speaker 1: especially from the older sisters disciplining the younger ones who
Speaker 1: they resented having to care for while their parents were
Speaker 1: at work. And then the boys were very rambunctious as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the boys were fighting, you know, all
Speaker 3: the time, and you know, they were big on Wwe
Speaker 3: keep in mind, CPS comes by once in a while,
Speaker 3: and so we have the CPS reports, and on one
Speaker 3: of those, the very last time they came to visit,
Speaker 3: which was two months prior to Mariah's death. There's concern that,
Speaker 3: you know, the place is too small, that they're you know,
Speaker 3: small objects on the floor, that those stairs are very dangerous,
Speaker 3: and the parents are not around, and basically it's up
Speaker 3: to the teenage daughters to supervise them.
Speaker 1: So among the many problems, they've got to move out
Speaker 1: of this decrepit, totally unfit apartment with the rickety stairs,
Speaker 1: and they found a first floor apartment with just two
Speaker 1: or three steps leading up to the door, and that
Speaker 1: move was going to be happening over the course of
Speaker 1: February fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth of two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: And so Melissa and Roberto were in the process of
Speaker 2: trying to get the family moved, and so some of
Speaker 2: the kids were with their mom, some of the kids
Speaker 2: were with their dad. They're going back and forth in
Speaker 2: a pickup truck taking loads. Mariah, being at that point
Speaker 2: about two and a half years old, was in the
Speaker 2: second story apartment with her mom and at least one
Speaker 2: of the teenage daughters while they were trying to pack
Speaker 2: things up. Several of the sort of younger age children
Speaker 2: about eight nine years old were downstairs playing in the
Speaker 2: backyard at some point, Melissa and the older daughter are
Speaker 2: in one of the bedrooms. They're packing up clothes, what
Speaker 2: have you, and one of the kids who's playing in
Speaker 2: the backyard came upstairs. He went into the apartment to
Speaker 2: get a drink of water, and there was a screen
Speaker 2: door on that exteriors or that had a latch on it,
Speaker 2: and when he went back downstairs to go play, he
Speaker 2: left that door unlatched. And Mariah, who as we've already discussed,
Speaker 2: was unstable on her feet because of her small deformity,
Speaker 2: went to go follow her brother and she started down
Speaker 2: the stairs and fell. One of her brothers saw her
Speaker 2: as she sort of tumbled the last three or four
Speaker 2: steps and hit her head on the pavement. Melissa, at
Speaker 2: this point goes looking for her and finds Maria at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the stairwell, and she checks her over
Speaker 2: and doesn't see any serious injury. Doesn't look like she's
Speaker 2: broken any bones or anything, and Mariah's not crying, she's
Speaker 2: not acting like she's hurt, and so she takes Mariah
Speaker 2: and they go back upstairs and they continue to pack
Speaker 2: and complete the move to the new apartment. So by
Speaker 2: time Saturday rolls around, Mariah has already had this closed
Speaker 2: head injury from this fall down the stairs that is
Speaker 2: not noticeable from her head or scalp, and her progression
Speaker 2: of symptoms during that time period is exactly what you
Speaker 2: would expect for a child of that age who's had
Speaker 2: a serious close head injury and who has swelling on
Speaker 2: the brain. It progresses from lethargy to not wanting to eat,
Speaker 2: to ultimately some more serious symptoms where she has lockjaw,
Speaker 2: and then she basically loses consciousness, although to her parents
Speaker 2: she's still just sleeping. And at that point they're already
Speaker 2: in this first floor apartment and Roberto Alvarez goes out
Speaker 2: on air and he comes back and he goes to
Speaker 2: check on Mariah and she is non responsive, and so
Speaker 2: they do end up calling EMS, and EMS shows up
Speaker 2: at this apartment and they see injuries bruises on Mariah
Speaker 2: that they don't have any explanation for. And they hear
Speaker 2: Melissa say, well, she fell down the stairs a few
Speaker 2: days ago and we thought she was okay, but maybe
Speaker 2: she wasn't. And the EMS sort of jumped to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that the stairs Melissa is talking about are the
Speaker 2: two or three steps from the ground floor apartment they
Speaker 2: are now in, and they have no knowledge of this
Speaker 2: full flight of stairs at the prior apartment that they
Speaker 2: were living in just a few days earlier, And so
Speaker 2: the EMS are incredulous, to say the least. They're, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, a kid can't get this injured falling down
Speaker 2: two or three stairs. And so they try and resuscitate
Speaker 2: Mariah unsuccessfully, which can leave its own kinds of bruises
Speaker 2: on a body. But the MS take her to the hospital.
Speaker 2: She does pass away, and Melissa is arrested and taken
Speaker 2: to the police station.
Speaker 1: So when she was pronounced dead Mariah, of course, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about in the er. She was examined initially by
Speaker 1: an er physician named Vargas, and he noted that she
Speaker 1: had sustained significant physical abuse. He said that she had
Speaker 1: several bruises that were in various stages of healing, and
Speaker 1: that there were bite marks on her back, and that
Speaker 1: one of her arms had been broken sometime two to
Speaker 1: seven weeks prior, and that she was missing portions of
Speaker 1: her hair. But Fargas said he found no outward sign
Speaker 1: of head injury. So you can see how there's like
Speaker 1: a straight line connecting this to the interrogation. The interrogator
Speaker 1: was taking these findings from this doctor and then trying
Speaker 1: to put those words into Melissa's mouth.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not wrong. This information was all then
Speaker 2: conveyed to the police, and the police went in to
Speaker 2: the interrogation room with Melissa with already the preconceived notion
Speaker 2: that this had to have been physical abuse, and it
Speaker 2: had to have been physical abuse by Melissa in their view,
Speaker 2: because she was Mariah's primary caretaker, because she was the mother,
Speaker 2: and that's where her nightmare really sort of began as
Speaker 2: far as her involvement with the criminal justice system in
Speaker 2: this case, because she is interrogated at length, well into
Speaker 2: the night and early wee hours of the morning by
Speaker 2: multiple police officers who are aggressively denying her explanation that
Speaker 2: Mariah had fallen down the stairs and her attempts to
Speaker 2: explain any older injuries that Mariah might have as having
Speaker 2: been the result of the rough play with her other
Speaker 2: older kids, which is well documented by CPS and by
Speaker 2: other just sort of slips and balls, because she has
Speaker 2: a tendency to do that, and they just aggressively deny this,
Speaker 2: deny this, deny this. They won't believe her, and finally,
Speaker 2: in the wee hours of the morning, they get her
Speaker 2: to say that she's responsible. And they never get her
Speaker 2: to say really that she murdered Mariah, or that she
Speaker 2: hit her on the head or anything. They just get
Speaker 2: her basically to admit responsibility in the sort of overarching
Speaker 2: way of a mother responsible for the circumstances that led
Speaker 2: to her child's death, and so she is charged with
Speaker 2: capital murder.
Speaker 1: At that point, it's actually remarkable that she was able
Speaker 1: to not really confess. I mean, they called it a confession,
Speaker 1: but she didn't really confess. But eventually she was questioned
Speaker 1: by a Texas ranger named Escalon. She confessed basically having
Speaker 1: spanked Mariah several times, quote, day after day, and other
Speaker 1: minor abuses which we now know didn't happen, like biting her.
Speaker 1: So she was confessing to things that didn't even make
Speaker 1: any sense at all because they weren't true. She was
Speaker 1: just basically trying to say, I guess anything she could
Speaker 1: to get out of this awful situation, and Target went
Speaker 1: so far as to ask Willista to demonstrate the spanking
Speaker 1: on a doll and was encouraged by the investigator to
Speaker 1: spank the doll harder, right, I mean, and this is
Speaker 1: on video, right, I mean the.
Speaker 4: Way you actually did it just hard on her back.
Speaker 6: We'll do it real hard, you will do it, but
Speaker 6: the way you would do it, that's.
Speaker 4: The way we do it. I mean I wouldn't found
Speaker 4: on her. Mm hmm. It was it harder because I
Speaker 4: just I don't do it's hard. Well, you're doing it
Speaker 4: on yourself.
Speaker 7: This is.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wasn't pounding on her.
Speaker 6: Yes, okay, and this is just what it was thanking.
Speaker 8: My name is doctor John Pinkerman. I was the clinical
Speaker 8: psychologist appointed to Miss Melissa Lucio's defense team. Melissa had
Speaker 8: a history of certainly abuse, sexual abuse, and mistreatment going
Speaker 8: back into adolescence and can continuing throughout her adulthood in
Speaker 8: which she acquiesced to multiple individuals that abused her. She
Speaker 8: became pretty compliant with individuals, didn't tend to break free
Speaker 8: from them and often continue the relationships even though they
Speaker 8: were really self defeating. For so, we felt this was
Speaker 8: you know, and I felt it was really a problem
Speaker 8: issue That helped explain some of the behavior that she
Speaker 8: evidenced during the interrogation and how she came to provide
Speaker 8: an acquiescence. I don't know if I want to call
Speaker 8: it a confession, but an acquiescence to the investigators in
Speaker 8: regard to her conduct. I was struck by how she
Speaker 8: was explaining that she was spanking the children, or spanking Melissa,
Speaker 8: and she it appeared like coach to show stronger force
Speaker 8: in striking the table in the interview room. You know,
Speaker 8: all of that contradicted every piece of information we had
Speaker 8: that she provided physical discipline to the children. You know,
Speaker 8: we never heard that from any of the children, and
Speaker 8: certainly not to the extent of causing the alleged injury
Speaker 8: and subsequent death.
Speaker 2: It's important to note that he didn't just encourage her
Speaker 2: to spank the dull harder. I mean, he encouraged you
Speaker 2: to confess to things which she had no knowledge of
Speaker 2: or had no part of. He told her there was
Speaker 2: a bite on Mariah's back and got her to confess
Speaker 2: to having bitten Mariah and at least my medical expert,
Speaker 2: so that wasn't even a bite mark. It was a
Speaker 2: parallel striation bruises from having fallen down the flight of
Speaker 2: stairs on her shoulder blade. And so Ranger Escalon got
Speaker 2: Melissa to admit to a type of abuse of Mariah
Speaker 2: that did not exist, that had not happened at all.
Speaker 2: And again, that's sort of a hallmark of a false confession,
Speaker 2: is getting somebody to confess to something that there's no
Speaker 2: evidence of.
Speaker 1: At the end of it. And this really is such
Speaker 1: a painful thing to think about. And I saw it,
Speaker 1: of course in the film. But you know, she ultimately says,
Speaker 1: I wish it was me that got hurt, and then
Speaker 1: started crying.
Speaker 6: How do you feel when you see these pictures?
Speaker 4: No, she was maybe not hurt.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to add?
Speaker 4: Okay, she listen. It's three fifteen am, and that will
Speaker 4: end the interview.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Porton and Garrison,
Speaker 1: a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had
Speaker 1: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance
Speaker 1: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
Speaker 1: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice area. So during the interrogation, Escalon asked Melissa
Speaker 1: if they would find a fractured skull during the autopsy,
Speaker 1: even though the er physician said there was no sign
Speaker 1: of head injury, but Escalon had a theory right. So
Speaker 1: on Monday February nineteenth, two thousand and seven, the chief
Speaker 1: forensic pathologist of Cameron and Hidalgo County is a woman
Speaker 1: named Norma je and Farley had conducted an autopsy and
Speaker 1: ruled that, due to the presence of bloodpooled in the
Speaker 1: crandial vault, that the cause of death was quote blunt
Speaker 1: force had trauma. And then she went on during the
Speaker 1: trial to say that a fall downstairs could not possibly
Speaker 1: have been the cause. But that doesn't sound like science.
Speaker 1: That sounds like conjecture, right. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: My name is doctor Thomas Young. I am a forensic pathologist.
Speaker 6: Back in twenty ten, I was contacted by Margaret Schmucker,
Speaker 6: who served as an appellate attorney on the case of
Speaker 6: Texas versus Melissa Lucio. She wanted me to look at
Speaker 6: the records and offer opinions that I could make to
Speaker 6: a reasonable degree of medical certainty. Doctor Norma Jean Farley,
Speaker 6: who is also a forensic pathologist, has made a mistake
Speaker 6: very common in forensic pathologists. The idea that you can
Speaker 6: look at an autopsy, that you can look at findings
Speaker 6: on a body and be able to determine the very
Speaker 6: very complex succession of events that happened in the past
Speaker 6: to lead to that event. This is reasoning backwards. It
Speaker 6: doesn't work. It is like trying to solve blank plus
Speaker 6: blank equals four. If you think four is the consequence
Speaker 6: of blank plus blank, looking at four doesn't give you
Speaker 6: the answer to what goes in the blanks. There are
Speaker 6: already numerous witnesses as to what happened to see the
Speaker 6: succession of events that occurred that led to the outcome.
Speaker 6: What doctor Farley did was she reasoned backwards, ignoring all
Speaker 6: these witness accounts. She says that she knows for certain
Speaker 6: what happened here to Mariah Alvarez. And this is arrogant
Speaker 6: where you ignore what multiple witnesses say who were there
Speaker 6: to actually see what happened. This is absurd. This is
Speaker 6: just a flat out guess. But doctor Farley approaches it
Speaker 6: as if she is certain about this.
Speaker 3: How did she know that you cannot get a lot
Speaker 3: high trauma from a full down the stairs. I mean,
Speaker 3: it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: You know, the science has developed at the time of
Speaker 2: Maria's death in since that it is possible for a
Speaker 2: child to fall down even a very sharp flight of
Speaker 2: stairs and have a fatal head injury. All I can
Speaker 2: say is Norma Farley was just wrong on the science
Speaker 2: on that. You know, you put an expert on the
Speaker 2: witness stand and the jury, you know, gives them an
Speaker 2: awful lot of credence if they have appropriate credentials. And
Speaker 2: of course Norma Jean Farley was the medical examiner for
Speaker 2: the county, and so they give her testimony quite a
Speaker 2: bit of credibility clearly in reaching the verdict that they did.
Speaker 1: That sure sounds like the science is being adjusted to
Speaker 1: fit the narrative when that is exactly the opposite of
Speaker 1: how this all should function. Right. Well, now we get
Speaker 1: to the trial, which the state argued that Melissa had
Speaker 1: confessed to a pattern of abuse and inflicting the fatal
Speaker 1: blows that killed Mariah. So the video clearly shows that
Speaker 1: that is not the case. So they supported the theory
Speaker 1: that Melissa was abusive with evidence that Mariah had bruises,
Speaker 1: which we know she did, that were at various stages
Speaker 1: of healing. But we also have covered why they were there,
Speaker 1: and that had nothing to do with Melissa except the
Speaker 1: fact that she was not in control of her own
Speaker 1: life at that point, right, and Norma Jean Farley, again
Speaker 1: as a chief forensic pathologist, testified that Mariah's death was
Speaker 1: the result of blood force head trauma. She continued that
Speaker 1: it must have occurred within twenty four hours of death,
Speaker 1: and that it would have been immediately apparent that Mariah
Speaker 1: was in distress and in need of medical attention. Now,
Speaker 1: Farley testified that Mariah suffered multiple contusions to her head area,
Speaker 1: but somehow she was magically able to rule out that
Speaker 1: the strikes to the head were not the result of
Speaker 1: tumbling down the stairs. Now, I don't think she witnessed
Speaker 1: the tumbling down the stairs. So again, how in the
Speaker 1: world would she know that, Well, she wouldn't, but this
Speaker 1: is probably what she thought that the authorities wanted to hear. So,
Speaker 1: just so we're clear, Melissa's defense did put on the
Speaker 1: stand an expert named doctor Curry.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, they did. But when they qualified doctor Curry
Speaker 2: as an expert, since he was a pediatric neurologist, he
Speaker 2: was not a forensic scientist, and so they did not
Speaker 2: allow him to testify it regarding the source of any
Speaker 2: of her other injuries anywhere below the neck. And so
Speaker 2: because the defense didn't hire a better expert or more
Speaker 2: appropriate expert. They were not able to counter the state's
Speaker 2: case that all of these prior injuries were from being
Speaker 2: beaten repeatedly over a period of weeks or months. But
Speaker 2: he did contradict Norma Jean Farley's testimony in the timing
Speaker 2: of the head injury that caused her death. Norma Jean
Speaker 2: Farley had said that the injury had to have occurred
Speaker 2: approximately twenty four hours prior to her death. Doctor Curry,
Speaker 2: who was a pediatric neurologist, testified that it could have
Speaker 2: occurred earlier than that, you know, anywhere from forty eight
Speaker 2: to seventy two hours before she died. And so that
Speaker 2: becomes important when you look at the timeline of events
Speaker 2: of the family moving and everybody being together, you know,
Speaker 2: either at the old place, the new place, or in
Speaker 2: transit about whether or not Melissa was ever alone with Mariah.
Speaker 3: Melissa was never alone with Mariah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you go back through all of the evidence
Speaker 2: that the state had collected, whether they used it or
Speaker 2: not at trial, you find that Melissa was never alone
Speaker 2: with the kids at all. Whether you look at the
Speaker 2: timeline suggested by doctor Farley or you look at the
Speaker 2: timeline suggested by doctor Curry, she was always with family members.
Speaker 2: They were always together as a family, either you know,
Speaker 2: a few kids or more everybody during that whole seventy
Speaker 2: two hour period. And not one of those kids has
Speaker 2: ever said that during that time period that Melissa's ever
Speaker 2: hurt Mariah, ever touched her in any kind of aggressive way.
Speaker 1: How could you possibly be alone in a two room
Speaker 1: or so apartment with nine kids, is It's preposterous.
Speaker 2: So they did not present the evidence that she was
Speaker 2: never alone within that twenty four to seventy two hours
Speaker 2: prior to Mariah's death, and that the kids were never
Speaker 2: allowed to testify that they'd never seen their mom hit
Speaker 2: Mariah during that period of time, and she was never
Speaker 2: alone with Maria during that period of time. And then
Speaker 2: there's the issue with doctor Pinkerman. The defense did try
Speaker 2: to put doctor Pinkerman on to talk about why my
Speaker 2: Melissa might have made this so called confession of being responsible,
Speaker 2: when in fact she was not, And the court refused
Speaker 2: to allow doctor Pinkerman to testify.
Speaker 3: To that.
Speaker 8: Of my colleague, Normal Villanueva was a social worker, and
Speaker 8: she and I developed different viewpoints about in the case.
Speaker 8: As we went along in our meetings with the defense team,
Speaker 8: we raised questions in our meetings, and I can remember
Speaker 8: at least on one occasion going to the second chair
Speaker 8: council just sort of asking, you know, is it possible
Speaker 8: that we could take a look at these issues and concerns.
Speaker 8: That individual said that he thought it might be a
Speaker 8: good idea, but he deferred to the lead attorney, mister Gilman.
Speaker 8: I was not asked to provide any testimony during the
Speaker 8: Gilt innocence phase of the trial, but in the sentencing phase,
Speaker 8: I felt my testimony was abbreviated and truncated in a
Speaker 8: way because there was a lot of background information that
Speaker 8: I was prepared to offer to the court that would,
Speaker 8: I hope, mitigate the ultimate sentence. It seemed that there
Speaker 8: was not much interest in having that information, as I understand,
Speaker 8: of course, the appeal was based on specifically on my
Speaker 8: opportunity or lack of opportunity to present that kind of viewpoint.
Speaker 3: Melissa didn't have anybody on her behalf. Her kids weren't
Speaker 3: allowed to testify, nobody was allowed to testify.
Speaker 2: She was alone in her defense because no one was
Speaker 2: really brought in to testify even though her trial attorneys
Speaker 2: knew that the older girls had admitted to causing Mariah's injuries,
Speaker 2: They knew that the younger kids had testified to seeing
Speaker 2: Mariah fall down the stairs, and they knew, or should
Speaker 2: have known, if they put sort of two and two
Speaker 2: together of all the various pieces of evidence that were
Speaker 2: available to them, that Melissa was never alone with Mariah
Speaker 2: at the time, But they never put any of that
Speaker 2: evidence on.
Speaker 1: With what the jury was presented with. The results were
Speaker 1: as predictable as they were tragic and wrong. She was
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to death.
Speaker 5: When the jury came back and said that they found
Speaker 5: me guilty, even though I did hear the word guilty,
Speaker 5: I didn't want to step it. The best way to
Speaker 5: describe it is I felt like I was in a
Speaker 5: dream and then I would wake up and I would
Speaker 5: be at home with my kids.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: Everybody was screaming and crying, and they let me out
Speaker 5: from the courtroom. They took me back to my cell
Speaker 5: and I remember I slept. I just tried to block
Speaker 5: out everything that had happened in that courtroom. I figured
Speaker 5: my children would be able to testify, that they would
Speaker 5: be able to get on that stand, and I know
Speaker 5: that they would come out and say the truth. And
Speaker 5: mister Gilman, he didn't want to. He told me no
Speaker 5: because he didn't know what the p secutors had in
Speaker 5: store for them, and he didn't want them to try
Speaker 5: to manipulate them. And he felt that it wasn't there
Speaker 5: wasn't a need for my children to be understand.
Speaker 1: You know, someone listening to this cold would probably come
Speaker 1: away with the impression that the defense attorney was almost
Speaker 1: like an adjunct prosecutor. And as crazy as that sounds,
Speaker 1: it's not that crazy when you think about the fact
Speaker 1: that he went to work for the prosecutor immediately after
Speaker 1: the trial, and why would the prosecutor's office hire him
Speaker 1: at a higher salary than the season prosecutors that were
Speaker 1: already working there immediately after having watched him do as
Speaker 1: terrible of a job as an attorney can possibly do
Speaker 1: for their client. It's just stinks so bad.
Speaker 7: It does stink.
Speaker 2: But let me make some clarifying points about what really happened.
Speaker 2: Right before Mariah dies, there was another murder case in
Speaker 2: the Brownsville area and the defendant was a guy by
Speaker 2: the name of Amat Livingston and mister Livingston ends up
Speaker 2: I believe, pleading guilty to murder, but with the agreement
Speaker 2: of the District attorney's office Armanda Violobos, he is released
Speaker 2: in order to go put his affairs in order before
Speaker 2: he has to go to prison. When he's released, he
Speaker 2: disappears into the wind. He's found more than a decade later,
Speaker 2: hiding out in India.
Speaker 3: But in any event, at the.
Speaker 2: Time he's gone missing in action. And the newspapers picked
Speaker 2: this up and they're like, you know, why did the
Speaker 2: District Attorney's office agree with this? You know what's going
Speaker 2: on here? This was all very bad press for mister Volobos,
Speaker 2: who was getting ready to run for reelection of the
Speaker 2: District Attorney of Cameron County. He needed a win, and
Speaker 2: he needed a win big. And right after all this
Speaker 2: happened is when Mariah died. And Melissa's the perfect target.
Speaker 2: She's poor, she's Hispanic. There's a dead baby with a
Speaker 2: lot of bruises. This is the perfect vehicle for mister
Speaker 2: vo Lobos to go, I'm hard on crime, re elect
Speaker 2: me in a district attorney's office. So obviously Melissa gets
Speaker 2: convicted since to death, mister vo Lobos gets re elected
Speaker 2: and within a fairly reasonable time after mister Vio Lobos
Speaker 2: is reelected, that's when Pete Gilman goes to work for
Speaker 2: the district Attorney's office.
Speaker 1: Un fucking believable. Please continue now.
Speaker 2: I did an open records request to find out about
Speaker 2: the hiring process for mister Gilman, and what I found
Speaker 2: out was he was supposedly interviewed on an unknown or
Speaker 2: unstated date by mister vo Lobos himself, and was hired
Speaker 2: and had accepted the job before he'd even submitted a
Speaker 2: CV or a resume to the human resources department. He
Speaker 2: was hired first and then he submitted those papers, so
Speaker 2: that was kind of shady. And then you find out
Speaker 2: that he gets a pretty good salary. District attorneys don't
Speaker 2: usually get paid the way attorneys in private practice do.
Speaker 2: It's usually a starter salary, a stepping stone to something bigger.
Speaker 2: He gets hired in at a pretty significant rate, and
Speaker 2: then his wife is also hired at the courthouse and
Speaker 2: between the two of them are bringing down a six
Speaker 2: figure salary.
Speaker 1: Wow. You know, just when you think you've heard everything,
Speaker 1: and I always think every week I said, I think
Speaker 1: I've heard it all, and then there's this. I mean,
Speaker 1: Where where do these people come from? How do they
Speaker 1: sleep at night? I mean, just to recap, so he's
Speaker 1: accepted the job. We don't know exactly what it could
Speaker 1: have been before the trial. For all we know, right,
Speaker 1: he could have actually been working for the prosecution while
Speaker 1: supposedly defending Melissa. And let's just look at what he
Speaker 1: did and did not do during the trial. This Gilman
Speaker 1: character failed to call as witnesses any of Melissa's children
Speaker 1: who had seen Mariah file down the stairs. Okay, that
Speaker 1: alone is fucking shocking. Then there was the social worker,
Speaker 1: right Norma Villanueva, to whom Melissa's daughter Alexandra bravely had
Speaker 1: said that she was the reason Mariah fell down the stairs.
Speaker 1: The social worker was instructed by Gilman to not alert
Speaker 1: anyone to this statement that sounds like the work of
Speaker 1: an adjunct prosecutor. She was not, of course, called to testify.
Speaker 1: That testimony could have been extremely valuable. There was also
Speaker 1: a host of witnesses that were interviewed and or put
Speaker 1: on the stand by the state that together never placed
Speaker 1: Melissa alone with Mariah. Yet to that that no witness
Speaker 1: ever saw Melissa beat Mariah at any time, and Melissa
Speaker 1: and Riah whenever alone, we know that Farley's theory. A
Speaker 1: first year law student could have connected these dots and
Speaker 1: shown that Farley's theory was nonsense. But none of that
Speaker 1: was ever done for the jury. And then just process
Speaker 1: this with me for a second.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So there's a horrible interview with Yilman after he had
Speaker 1: already joined the prosecutor's office formally, instead of only you
Speaker 1: know well anyway, but he said and I quote, she
Speaker 1: was not a good mother. Did she kill her child?
Speaker 1: I don't know? End quote.
Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you something. When I interviewed Peter Gilman,
Speaker 3: because that's in the film, you would have thought that
Speaker 3: Melissa was his worst enemy. He had nothing nice to
Speaker 3: say about her. He went on and on. It was
Speaker 3: quite an extraordinary And.
Speaker 7: I said to him, I kept asking him. I was like,
Speaker 7: what was your strategy? What was your strategy at Trout?
Speaker 7: And he couldn't answer. I think I asked him that
Speaker 7: question maybe seven times. What was your strategy? I mean,
Speaker 7: did you believe that it was an accident? Did you believe?
Speaker 7: He couldn't answer he had no strategy.
Speaker 1: He had a strategy. It wasn't a defense strategy, but
Speaker 1: he had a strategy and to get himself a better job. So,
Speaker 1: in case you haven't heard enough yet, and in case
Speaker 1: you were looking for an even more terrible villain in
Speaker 1: this story, if such a thing as possible, boy, do
Speaker 1: we have one for you now. The elected district attorney,
Speaker 1: a gentleman named Armando via Lobos, and mister via Lobos
Speaker 1: was at the time of this all that stuff taking place.
Speaker 1: He himself was at the center of an FBI investigation,
Speaker 1: and for good reason. There was a public scandal that
Speaker 1: emerged because he was using his office to enrich and
Speaker 1: empower himself through several different schemes, one of which was
Speaker 1: bribery in exchange for favorable outcomes at trial.
Speaker 3: He was involved with cartels. He would bring lawyers and
Speaker 3: judges to Las Vegas and pretend to lose in poker
Speaker 3: games so you know, he could bribe them. It goes
Speaker 3: on and on. Basically, his agenda was to take money from,
Speaker 3: you know, people who could pay him, and then four
Speaker 3: people like Melissa he would use to be reelected. The
Speaker 3: moment he heard about Melissa's case, he was at the
Speaker 3: police station. I mean, while Melissa's being interrogated, I mean,
Speaker 3: he's already there. He just completely used her case. You know,
Speaker 3: Margaret will tell you how very rare for DA's to
Speaker 3: actually get personally involved, you know, in cases. I mean,
Speaker 3: he even did the ending statement at her trial.
Speaker 2: He not only did the ending statement, but he actually
Speaker 2: examined one of the state's witnesses, and he had the
Speaker 2: state's witness get up off the witness stand and pretend
Speaker 2: to shake a child like shaken baby syndrome, which has
Speaker 2: questionable scientific background, especially for a child of Mariah's age.
Speaker 2: If you talk to the scientists, they will tell you
Speaker 2: that a child is large as Mariah. If you'd shaken
Speaker 2: her heart enough to cause the brain to sort of
Speaker 2: shake back and forth inside the skull and be damaged,
Speaker 2: you have to have broken her neck. But he nevertheless
Speaker 2: has this witness get up off the witness stand and
Speaker 2: stand in front of the jury and pretend to violently
Speaker 2: shake a child as a demonstration. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how intensely that played into the jury's verdict, but
Speaker 2: I'm sure it wasn't ignored.
Speaker 1: And then he took part in this sentencing phase to
Speaker 1: make sure that she got death.
Speaker 3: I mean, and he had to prove to the jury
Speaker 3: future dangerousness. Right, and Melissa had never been arrested before.
Speaker 3: And Melissa had no prior history of violence whatsoever. So
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, he needs to prove to the
Speaker 3: jury that you know, she is so violent that she
Speaker 3: actually might be a danger to prisoners, and that's why
Speaker 3: she needs to be on death throw. Right, Let's put
Speaker 3: it this way. I mean, if Melissa Lucio is the
Speaker 3: type of person that is actually the most dangerous person
Speaker 3: in America, that she would end up on death row.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we were in trouble.
Speaker 1: She wasn't even the most dangerous person in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: That DA was the most dangerous person in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: He was running a continuing criminal enterprise. He's doing backroom
Speaker 1: deals with cartels, He's bribing judges and lawyers. He's selling verdicts,
Speaker 1: letting murderers, serial murderers run free. I mean, this guy,
Speaker 1: he'd be a cartoon villain, except there's nothing funny about
Speaker 1: any of it. So we know how rare it is
Speaker 1: for prosecutors to be prosecuted. But this one the FBI
Speaker 1: took very seriously and they got involved to say the least. Right,
Speaker 1: how did it end up?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 3: I interviewed Michael Wynn, who was the lead prosecutor against
Speaker 3: Armando Villa Lobos, and of course I never had any
Speaker 3: contact with the ABI, but he told me that they
Speaker 3: were trying to get him because he was running for
Speaker 3: Congress and they wanted to make sure that that did
Speaker 3: not happen. So they were trying to get him, and
Speaker 3: they had so much on him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The feedback that I got on that line was there
Speaker 2: was so much on mister Vio Lobos that they decided
Speaker 2: to stick to sort of their slam dunk case for
Speaker 2: conviction because they just needed him gone. And so Melissa's stuff,
Speaker 2: it came out a little bit in the Fiolobo's trial.
Speaker 2: The bit about at Livingstone and all of that did
Speaker 2: come out at trial, and Melissa's involvement and that came
Speaker 2: out in trial, but it was very, very limited. It
Speaker 2: wasn't the focus of their energies at mister Lobo's ateral
Speaker 2: criminal trup.
Speaker 3: You know, I find that extraordinary as an outsider, that
Speaker 3: you know, you have, you know, a quarter pointed attorney
Speaker 3: who now works at the DA's office who basically did
Speaker 3: not defend Melissa at all, and then you have a
Speaker 3: DA who got thirteen years of federal prison. But you
Speaker 3: know that has nothing to do with Melissa's case, and
Speaker 3: you know her case should not be re examined. It's infuriating.
Speaker 1: No, You're absolutely right. Every single case that this guy
Speaker 1: had anything to do with needs to be immediately reopened
Speaker 1: and thoroughly re examined. And I'm not saying, to be
Speaker 1: clear that everybody that he prosecuted is innocent, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them probably are. And in any case, it's
Speaker 1: abundantly clear that almost none of them could have possibly
Speaker 1: gotten a fair trial. And Melissa absolutely did not get
Speaker 1: what she is constitutionally guaranteed, which is a fair trial.
Speaker 1: And what I find particularly shocking is that Gilman hasn't
Speaker 1: even been disbarred. I mean, this case is a literal
Speaker 1: poster child for ineffective assistance of counsel. But Melissa remains
Speaker 1: a death row to this very day, and the State
Speaker 1: of Texas is desperately continuing to try to execute her.
Speaker 1: So her direct appeal was denied, you filed her state
Speaker 1: habeas and then it moved on to federal habeas and
Speaker 1: ended up in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which
Speaker 1: is the conservative federal court that sits on top of
Speaker 1: Texas among other states.
Speaker 2: And it's at that point that I ended up kind
Speaker 2: of being dropped out of the case. But what ended
Speaker 2: up happening there was ultimately the Fifth Circuit, a panel
Speaker 2: of the Fifth Circuit, three judges who initially heard the case,
Speaker 2: ordered that Melissa should get a new trial. The state
Speaker 2: was not happy with that outcome. They asked for what's
Speaker 2: called a rehearing en banc, which is a rehearing in
Speaker 2: front of all of the justices of the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 2: Court of Appeals. The request for on bank rehearing was granted,
Speaker 2: and there was another argument, and just recently the Fifth
Speaker 2: Circuit issued an opinion which was deeply divided, that denied
Speaker 2: Melissa the right to a new trial and again affirmed
Speaker 2: what happened in the state court. So from here, she
Speaker 2: has basically ninety days from that date to file a
Speaker 2: request for her case to be heard of the United
Speaker 2: States Supreme Court, and.
Speaker 3: They take what one percent of cases.
Speaker 2: Probably probably less than one percent of the cases. So
Speaker 2: you know, her odds, you know, of having her case
Speaker 2: taken are not good. And you know, once it's in
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, it can take a while. But if
Speaker 2: they a nicer it's all over. There are some additional
Speaker 2: post conviction procedural maneuvers which may take place. Since I'm
Speaker 2: no longer her attorney, I don't know what they're going
Speaker 2: to be doing, but from my perspective, because the state
Speaker 2: used what I would consider to be junk science, the
Speaker 2: shaken baby testimony, the fall down the stairs can't cause
Speaker 2: the head injury testimony, that sort of thing, that potentially
Speaker 2: her new council could go back into the courts on
Speaker 2: what's called a junk science writ on her behalf, and
Speaker 2: they may also be able to file a civil rights
Speaker 2: action on her behalf, maybe going back to some of
Speaker 2: the issues with mister vo Lobos, that the way that
Speaker 2: her case was even presented and ended up in the
Speaker 2: court in the first place was a result of a
Speaker 2: violation of her civil rights.
Speaker 1: I asked you to please join me in supporting Melissa.
Speaker 1: The one simple step you can take is go to
Speaker 1: actionnetwork dot org that's a network dot org to sign
Speaker 1: a petition, and there will be more links in our
Speaker 1: bio for other constructive steps you can take. Your voice matters,
Speaker 1: so please spread the word, get involved. Let's save Melissa
Speaker 1: before it's too late and Sabrina, I watched your movie,
Speaker 1: and in no small part that's why we're here, because
Speaker 1: your movie is such a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking
Speaker 1: and tells his story so hauntingly. How can people access
Speaker 1: the film, Well.
Speaker 3: The film is called The State of Texas Versus Melissa
Speaker 3: being streamed right now. It's on Hulu.
Speaker 1: And now we turn to the part of our show
Speaker 1: that always seems to be the best. Posing arguments and
Speaker 1: how this works is very simple. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to thank are two esteemed guests for just coming
Speaker 1: and sharing your passion and your expertise. Of course I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Sabrina and Tassel and Margaret Schmucker. Thank you
Speaker 1: both again for being here.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 7: Thank you Jason so much.
Speaker 1: Closing arguments works like this, I turn off my microphone,
Speaker 1: kick back in my chair and just listen to whatever
Speaker 1: you have to say, whatever you feel there is left
Speaker 1: to say after this extraordinary conversation. So we'll start off
Speaker 1: with Margaret, then Sabrina, and then Melissa.
Speaker 2: I've talked about other lawyers in this I feel like
Speaker 2: I need to make it clear that you know, there's
Speaker 2: nothing I've said today that isn't readily available as a
Speaker 2: matter of court record. It's been in the state courts,
Speaker 2: it's been in the federal courts. If you've got the energy,
Speaker 2: you can go look it up. But you know, the
Speaker 2: key take home points. You know that there is and was,
Speaker 2: you know, some level of corruption involved in this case.
Speaker 2: And that's of concern that there is evidence that you know,
Speaker 2: Melissa could not have caused more injuries in the timeframe
Speaker 2: that she was said to have caught them in, that
Speaker 2: she's never been violent with her kids. There is an
Speaker 2: absolute difference between physical abuse, which is a positive action,
Speaker 2: and neglect, which is an absence of an action, and
Speaker 2: her entire history is neglect because she just had too
Speaker 2: many kids. And we have to always also be concerned
Speaker 2: about the fact that are we looking at all this
Speaker 2: evidence through the lens of sort of white privilege, and
Speaker 2: we have to take a step back and say, you
Speaker 2: can't do that. You have to look at it from
Speaker 2: her perspective and what was going on in her life
Speaker 2: and why she was acting the way she was. And
Speaker 2: of course for that we had doctor Pinkerman. And as
Speaker 2: to the physical stuff, obviously we have doctor Young who
Speaker 2: has been very helpful in this case. I would really
Speaker 2: hope that at some point Melissa's case will get back
Speaker 2: into court and that she will be fully exonerated and
Speaker 2: will be set free to be with her children.
Speaker 3: I want to say her name. Her name is Melissa Lucio,
Speaker 3: and she's been away from her children for thirteen years.
Speaker 3: She hasn't seen most of her kids in that length
Speaker 3: of time, and she's never seen her mother again. She's
Speaker 3: never seen her brothers and sisters. I mean, she's been
Speaker 3: all alone on death row, twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 3: waiting for her fate. And she's someone who didn't stand,
Speaker 3: you know, a chance from the first day. And I
Speaker 3: hope and pray that, you know, people will get interested
Speaker 3: in her case and start tweeting about her and talking
Speaker 3: about her and raise this horrible story. You know, together we'll,
Speaker 3: you know, find a way to get her out of there.
Speaker 1: And now we'll hear from Melissa.
Speaker 5: My name is Melissa Elizabeth Lucio. I'm forty eight years old.
Speaker 5: I had fourteen children. It's been very hard to wake
Speaker 5: up each morning and not and I hear them calling
Speaker 5: out for me. The State of Texas wants to kill me.
Speaker 4: Every day.
Speaker 5: I ask God why I often think about my daughter Mariah.
Speaker 5: I've had a lot of dreams about her. I've dreamed
Speaker 5: that her and I are out there and that she's
Speaker 5: running around in her little dress, and she's wanted me
Speaker 5: to comb her hair, brush her hair, put Baretts on
Speaker 5: her hair, paint her nails, paint her toenails, and put
Speaker 5: some lipstick on her lips. It's hard to have dreams
Speaker 5: about your children because when you wake up and then
Speaker 5: you see where you're at, you wish that it wouldn't
Speaker 5: happen a dream, that it would have been reality.
Speaker 4: There are days that.
Speaker 5: That I feel that I could just leave this place
Speaker 5: and be reunited with Mariah and just tell her I'm
Speaker 5: sorry that I wasn't there to protect her and I
Speaker 5: failed her. I failed her in any ways.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburn,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Warnis. The music on the show, as always,
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction. Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one