WEBVTT - #207 Jason Flom with Melissa Lucio 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.640 Melissa Lucio grew up poor in South Texas, a victim 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.800 of years of sexual abuse from multiple offenders in the home. 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.760 At age sixteen, she married her first boyfriend to escape 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:15.720 tying up her self worth and being a mother, so 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.000 much so that she eventually had fourteen children. The final 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.360 two were twins that Melissa delivered behind bars after having 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.880 been accused of allegedly murdering the next youngest sibling, two 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.720 year old Mariah, on February fifteenth, two thousand and seven. 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.720 Mariah's older siblings witnessed her take a tumble down the stairs. 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.720 Lethargy and a lack of appetite were hoped to be 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.680 symptoms of something less severe than head trauma, but when 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:43.680 she became unresponsive on February seventeenth, they called the ms. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.760 Mariah passed away, and an aggressive interrogation ensued, resulting in 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.880 an admission to an overarching sense of guilt that most 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.440 any mother would feel. The usual bruising from rough play 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.320 with her siblings was later used to support the state's 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.120 theory of a pattern of abuse. Melissa's conviction would also 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:03.440 go a long way to shore up a tough on 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.160 crime image for a corrupt district attorney embroiled in a 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.480 bribery scandal during an election year, Defying logic and the 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.520 scientific method, the state's forensic pathologists ruled out Maria's fall 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.800 down the stairs as the cause of the failed head trauma. Further, 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:21.959 the children who witnessed the accident and denied the pattern 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.959 of abuse were not called to testify. After trial, Melissa's 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:29.000 defense attorney was immediately hired to the DA's office with 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:32.160 a bump and pay. The DA got reelected, but was 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:36.520 later prosecuted by the FBI, and Melissa is still on 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:57.320 death row. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:01.640 back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we're talking 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:05.000 about the case of Melissa Lucio, an innocent woman on 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:10.840 death row in Texas. Today. To tell this incredible, harrowing 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:15.600 and urgent story, we have with us Sabrina van Tassel. 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.839 Sabrina is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist who 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.280 has made forty five films and I think maybe it 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.000 was all a build up to this one. Sabrina, welcome 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.760 Toronful Conviction. Thank you so much, and with her is 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:37.000 a badass Texas attorney named Margaret Schmucker, and Margaret has 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:42.440 been a fierce advocate for Melissa as her habeas attorney. Margaret, 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:43.720 welcome toronful conviction. 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:45.160 Thank you for having me. 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.680 And thank you both for being here. So over the 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.200 past few years, Sabrina has visited Melissa Lucio on death 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.040 row in Texas, where she's been stuck since two thousand 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.160 and eight. And throughout this episode you're going to hear 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.679 excerpts from those interviews. You can also see in here 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:06.000 in Sabrina's film The State of Texas Versus Melissa. And 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.800 during those interviews, Melissa really was very candid with you 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.480 about her life, which was just beyond tragic from the 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:14.160 very beginning. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:18.280 So Melissa was born in Houston. Her father left the 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:21.200 mom when she was three months old, and they moved 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.520 to Harlingen, Texas, and the mother kept being, you know, 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.000 with different boyfriends. They were all abusive. 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:29.880 I was. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.760 Molested by my mother's boyfriend. I must have been about 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.680 seven years old when the abuse started. I grew up 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:46.240 not really loved because of this incident. I continued to 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:50.920 be molested by other family members. I just allowed myself 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.560 to be a victim over and over again. 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:00.320 She did tell her mother that the boyfriend was actually 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.760 abusing her, and the mother basically did not believe her, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.600 and then she basically allowed herself to be a victim 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.520 to other men in the family. And once she was 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.440 about fifteen years old, the first boyfriend that she got 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:19.520 involved with she married, and she started having a family 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.200 right after. By the age of twenty two, she already 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.680 had five children. Her husband introduced her to drugs, and 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.760 one day the husband just left her, and so all 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.440 of a sudden, she's twenty two and she has five children, 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:37.599 and she meets her other partner, Robert Alvarez, and together 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.039 they're going to have nine other children, right. 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.520 And two of those nine were twins that Melissa delivered 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.239 in jail while she was being held for the alleged 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:52.280 murder of her youngest child at that time, Riah. So 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:56.120 before Mariah died, there were five from the first guy 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.480 and seven from Robert Alvarez, for a total of twelve. 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:02.680 Some of them were still really little, some of them 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.720 were teenagers. Some of them had even moved out by 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:07.760 the time Febuary two thousand and seven year olds around, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.400 which is when this incident happened. But before that they 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.400 were all living in desperate, desperate poverty and relying on 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.680 a charity called Loaves and Fishes for most of their meals. 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.560 Melissa and robert had very unpredictable schedules because they were 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:23.919 doing all sorts of odd jobs trying to support the 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.599 family and to keep up with all of it, or 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:28.840 to I don't know, maybe forget their troubles. Melissa and 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:31.600 Robert were using drugs out of the sight of the children, 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.840 but regrettably also while she was pregnant with Mariah. 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:40.520 When Melissa had Mariah, the seventh child with Roberta Alvarez, 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.680 she was born with drugs in her system, and so 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:49.520 she was taken from Melissa or mister Albarez by CPS 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.400 Child Protective Services, along with all of the other kids 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.480 that were in the home at that time, and they 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.920 were placed in foster care. They were fairly well split up. 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:03.400 That continued for so years, and Melissa and Roberta were 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.320 given supervised visits with Child Protective Services with the kids, 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:12.720 and then finally, when Mariah's about two years old, over Thanksgiving, 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:18.080 CPS returned the seven children, who were still minors at 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:21.799 the time, back into the home of Melissa and Roberta. 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:24.000 And so it is from that point until the point 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.520 where Mariah dies, where there's nine children in the home 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:32.120 in this small second story apartment with a rickety, scary 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:35.560 stairwell on the exterior, which is the access point right. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.560 And to make this accent even more likely to happen, 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.159 Mariah had this is important, a physical impairment as well. 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:44.839 One of her feet was turned in slightly, which caused 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.880 her to be unstable and to fall downstairs occasionally, as 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.000 was documented while she was in foster care. But that's 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.000 not all that was documented in those Child Protective Services reports. 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:59.080 There was a tremendous amount of inter sibling violence while 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:01.719 in foster care and when they were living at home, 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.320 especially from the older sisters disciplining the younger ones who 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.000 they resented having to care for while their parents were 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:12.040 at work. And then the boys were very rambunctious as well. 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.840 Yeah, I mean the boys were fighting, you know, all 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.680 the time, and you know, they were big on Wwe 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.080 keep in mind, CPS comes by once in a while, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.400 and so we have the CPS reports, and on one 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.559 of those, the very last time they came to visit, 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:32.240 which was two months prior to Mariah's death. There's concern that, 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:34.840 you know, the place is too small, that they're you know, 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:39.200 small objects on the floor, that those stairs are very dangerous, 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.440 and the parents are not around, and basically it's up 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.040 to the teenage daughters to supervise them. 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.960 So among the many problems, they've got to move out 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:54.000 of this decrepit, totally unfit apartment with the rickety stairs, 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.520 and they found a first floor apartment with just two 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.080 or three steps leading up to the door, and that 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.720 move was going to be happening over the course of 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.320 February fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth of two thousand and seven. 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:10.520 And so Melissa and Roberto were in the process of 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.400 trying to get the family moved, and so some of 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.160 the kids were with their mom, some of the kids 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.960 were with their dad. They're going back and forth in 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.360 a pickup truck taking loads. Mariah, being at that point 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:24.280 about two and a half years old, was in the 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:28.360 second story apartment with her mom and at least one 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.360 of the teenage daughters while they were trying to pack 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.960 things up. Several of the sort of younger age children 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:39.080 about eight nine years old were downstairs playing in the 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:43.719 backyard at some point, Melissa and the older daughter are 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.800 in one of the bedrooms. They're packing up clothes, what 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.640 have you, and one of the kids who's playing in 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.800 the backyard came upstairs. He went into the apartment to 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:54.880 get a drink of water, and there was a screen 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.160 door on that exteriors or that had a latch on it, 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.280 and when he went back downstairs to go play, he 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:07.800 left that door unlatched. And Mariah, who as we've already discussed, 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.640 was unstable on her feet because of her small deformity, 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.760 went to go follow her brother and she started down 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.040 the stairs and fell. One of her brothers saw her 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.600 as she sort of tumbled the last three or four 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.439 steps and hit her head on the pavement. Melissa, at 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.560 this point goes looking for her and finds Maria at 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.560 the bottom of the stairwell, and she checks her over 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.959 and doesn't see any serious injury. Doesn't look like she's 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.360 broken any bones or anything, and Mariah's not crying, she's 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.720 not acting like she's hurt, and so she takes Mariah 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.600 and they go back upstairs and they continue to pack 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.280 and complete the move to the new apartment. So by 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:54.559 time Saturday rolls around, Mariah has already had this closed 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.320 head injury from this fall down the stairs that is 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:01.920 not noticeable from her head or scalp, and her progression 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:06.520 of symptoms during that time period is exactly what you 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:08.720 would expect for a child of that age who's had 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.240 a serious close head injury and who has swelling on 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:16.600 the brain. It progresses from lethargy to not wanting to eat, 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:21.239 to ultimately some more serious symptoms where she has lockjaw, 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:25.280 and then she basically loses consciousness, although to her parents 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.720 she's still just sleeping. And at that point they're already 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.839 in this first floor apartment and Roberto Alvarez goes out 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:35.920 on air and he comes back and he goes to 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.280 check on Mariah and she is non responsive, and so 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.160 they do end up calling EMS, and EMS shows up 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:49.760 at this apartment and they see injuries bruises on Mariah 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.840 that they don't have any explanation for. And they hear 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.840 Melissa say, well, she fell down the stairs a few 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:00.520 days ago and we thought she was okay, but maybe 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.680 she wasn't. And the EMS sort of jumped to the 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:08.440 conclusion that the stairs Melissa is talking about are the 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.240 two or three steps from the ground floor apartment they 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.840 are now in, and they have no knowledge of this 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.760 full flight of stairs at the prior apartment that they 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.240 were living in just a few days earlier, And so 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.720 the EMS are incredulous, to say the least. They're, oh, 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:28.000 you know, a kid can't get this injured falling down 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.640 two or three stairs. And so they try and resuscitate 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:35.360 Mariah unsuccessfully, which can leave its own kinds of bruises 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.280 on a body. But the MS take her to the hospital. 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:44.720 She does pass away, and Melissa is arrested and taken 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:45.480 to the police station. 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.439 So when she was pronounced dead Mariah, of course, I'm 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.160 talking about in the er. She was examined initially by 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:58.000 an er physician named Vargas, and he noted that she 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:02.040 had sustained significant physical abuse. He said that she had 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.280 several bruises that were in various stages of healing, and 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.040 that there were bite marks on her back, and that 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.080 one of her arms had been broken sometime two to 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.600 seven weeks prior, and that she was missing portions of 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.160 her hair. But Fargas said he found no outward sign 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:23.520 of head injury. So you can see how there's like 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.880 a straight line connecting this to the interrogation. The interrogator 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.560 was taking these findings from this doctor and then trying 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.479 to put those words into Melissa's mouth. 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.280 I mean, you're not wrong. This information was all then 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.880 conveyed to the police, and the police went in to 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.800 the interrogation room with Melissa with already the preconceived notion 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.400 that this had to have been physical abuse, and it 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.440 had to have been physical abuse by Melissa in their view, 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:56.120 because she was Mariah's primary caretaker, because she was the mother, 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.520 and that's where her nightmare really sort of began as 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.440 far as her involvement with the criminal justice system in 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:07.720 this case, because she is interrogated at length, well into 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.920 the night and early wee hours of the morning by 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:17.440 multiple police officers who are aggressively denying her explanation that 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.080 Mariah had fallen down the stairs and her attempts to 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:25.319 explain any older injuries that Mariah might have as having 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.480 been the result of the rough play with her other 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:33.040 older kids, which is well documented by CPS and by 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.040 other just sort of slips and balls, because she has 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.200 a tendency to do that, and they just aggressively deny this, 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.520 deny this, deny this. They won't believe her, and finally, 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.320 in the wee hours of the morning, they get her 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.520 to say that she's responsible. And they never get her 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.480 to say really that she murdered Mariah, or that she 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.000 hit her on the head or anything. They just get 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:57.959 her basically to admit responsibility in the sort of overarching 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:02.560 way of a mother responsible for the circumstances that led 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.880 to her child's death, and so she is charged with 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:06.640 capital murder. 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.840 At that point, it's actually remarkable that she was able 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.480 to not really confess. I mean, they called it a confession, 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.800 but she didn't really confess. But eventually she was questioned 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:23.360 by a Texas ranger named Escalon. She confessed basically having 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:28.320 spanked Mariah several times, quote, day after day, and other 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.440 minor abuses which we now know didn't happen, like biting her. 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.000 So she was confessing to things that didn't even make 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.160 any sense at all because they weren't true. She was 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:38.600 just basically trying to say, I guess anything she could 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:43.160 to get out of this awful situation, and Target went 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.320 so far as to ask Willista to demonstrate the spanking 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:51.600 on a doll and was encouraged by the investigator to 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.720 spank the doll harder, right, I mean, and this is 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.440 on video, right, I mean the. 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:04.880 Way you actually did it just hard on her back. 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.920 We'll do it real hard, you will do it, but 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:10.720 the way you would do it, that's. 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.480 The way we do it. I mean I wouldn't found 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:22.400 on her. Mm hmm. It was it harder because I 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.240 just I don't do it's hard. Well, you're doing it 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:26.920 on yourself. 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:27.320 This is. 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.680 I mean, I wasn't pounding on her. 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.360 Yes, okay, and this is just what it was thanking. 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.080 My name is doctor John Pinkerman. I was the clinical 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:52.280 psychologist appointed to Miss Melissa Lucio's defense team. Melissa had 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:57.240 a history of certainly abuse, sexual abuse, and mistreatment going 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:01.800 back into adolescence and can continuing throughout her adulthood in 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:07.680 which she acquiesced to multiple individuals that abused her. She 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:13.560 became pretty compliant with individuals, didn't tend to break free 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.160 from them and often continue the relationships even though they 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.280 were really self defeating. For so, we felt this was 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:22.640 you know, and I felt it was really a problem 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.000 issue That helped explain some of the behavior that she 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:31.440 evidenced during the interrogation and how she came to provide 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:33.800 an acquiescence. I don't know if I want to call 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.480 it a confession, but an acquiescence to the investigators in 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.520 regard to her conduct. I was struck by how she 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.880 was explaining that she was spanking the children, or spanking Melissa, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:51.600 and she it appeared like coach to show stronger force 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.960 in striking the table in the interview room. You know, 0:16:56.240 --> 0:17:01.080 all of that contradicted every piece of information we had 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.439 that she provided physical discipline to the children. You know, 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.520 we never heard that from any of the children, and 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:11.080 certainly not to the extent of causing the alleged injury 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:12.320 and subsequent death. 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.440 It's important to note that he didn't just encourage her 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.280 to spank the dull harder. I mean, he encouraged you 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:22.800 to confess to things which she had no knowledge of 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:25.520 or had no part of. He told her there was 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.960 a bite on Mariah's back and got her to confess 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:34.880 to having bitten Mariah and at least my medical expert, 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.000 so that wasn't even a bite mark. It was a 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.119 parallel striation bruises from having fallen down the flight of 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:47.200 stairs on her shoulder blade. And so Ranger Escalon got 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:53.800 Melissa to admit to a type of abuse of Mariah 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.960 that did not exist, that had not happened at all. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.879 And again, that's sort of a hallmark of a false confession, 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.639 is getting somebody to confess to something that there's no 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:06.240 evidence of. 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:08.800 At the end of it. And this really is such 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.399 a painful thing to think about. And I saw it, 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:15.280 of course in the film. But you know, she ultimately says, 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.600 I wish it was me that got hurt, and then 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:18.560 started crying. 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:21.400 How do you feel when you see these pictures? 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:25.840 No, she was maybe not hurt. 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.560 Is there anything else you want to add? 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:58.040 Okay, she listen. It's three fifteen am, and that will 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:02.159 end the interview. 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:12.600 This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Porton and Garrison, 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.280 a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:20.560 an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.159 to the most vulnerable members of our society and in 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.960 support of the public interest, including extensive work in the 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:39.680 criminal justice area. So during the interrogation, Escalon asked Melissa 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.400 if they would find a fractured skull during the autopsy, 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.720 even though the er physician said there was no sign 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:49.600 of head injury, but Escalon had a theory right. So 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.960 on Monday February nineteenth, two thousand and seven, the chief 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.640 forensic pathologist of Cameron and Hidalgo County is a woman 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:58.800 named Norma je and Farley had conducted an autopsy and 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:02.840 ruled that, due to the presence of bloodpooled in the 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:06.280 crandial vault, that the cause of death was quote blunt 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.159 force had trauma. And then she went on during the 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.440 trial to say that a fall downstairs could not possibly 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:17.160 have been the cause. But that doesn't sound like science. 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:20.000 That sounds like conjecture, right. Oh. 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:20.680 Absolutely. 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.359 My name is doctor Thomas Young. I am a forensic pathologist. 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.880 Back in twenty ten, I was contacted by Margaret Schmucker, 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.000 who served as an appellate attorney on the case of 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.359 Texas versus Melissa Lucio. She wanted me to look at 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.760 the records and offer opinions that I could make to 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.840 a reasonable degree of medical certainty. Doctor Norma Jean Farley, 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.760 who is also a forensic pathologist, has made a mistake 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.160 very common in forensic pathologists. The idea that you can 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.280 look at an autopsy, that you can look at findings 0:20:56.280 --> 0:21:01.560 on a body and be able to determine the very 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:04.480 very complex succession of events that happened in the past 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:08.919 to lead to that event. This is reasoning backwards. It 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.960 doesn't work. It is like trying to solve blank plus 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:17.320 blank equals four. If you think four is the consequence 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.919 of blank plus blank, looking at four doesn't give you 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.399 the answer to what goes in the blanks. There are 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.199 already numerous witnesses as to what happened to see the 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:31.760 succession of events that occurred that led to the outcome. 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:37.560 What doctor Farley did was she reasoned backwards, ignoring all 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:41.520 these witness accounts. She says that she knows for certain 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:46.480 what happened here to Mariah Alvarez. And this is arrogant 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:50.320 where you ignore what multiple witnesses say who were there 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:54.639 to actually see what happened. This is absurd. This is 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:59.359 just a flat out guess. But doctor Farley approaches it 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:01.280 as if she is certain about this. 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:06.560 How did she know that you cannot get a lot 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.040 high trauma from a full down the stairs. I mean, 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:10.600 it makes no sense. 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:14.199 You know, the science has developed at the time of 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:17.720 Maria's death in since that it is possible for a 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.159 child to fall down even a very sharp flight of 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:22.200 stairs and have a fatal head injury. All I can 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.600 say is Norma Farley was just wrong on the science 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:27.240 on that. You know, you put an expert on the 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:29.359 witness stand and the jury, you know, gives them an 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.000 awful lot of credence if they have appropriate credentials. And 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:35.199 of course Norma Jean Farley was the medical examiner for 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.359 the county, and so they give her testimony quite a 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:42.359 bit of credibility clearly in reaching the verdict that they did. 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:45.600 That sure sounds like the science is being adjusted to 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:48.439 fit the narrative when that is exactly the opposite of 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.240 how this all should function. Right. Well, now we get 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.960 to the trial, which the state argued that Melissa had 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:58.040 confessed to a pattern of abuse and inflicting the fatal 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:02.800 blows that killed Mariah. So the video clearly shows that 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.399 that is not the case. So they supported the theory 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:09.920 that Melissa was abusive with evidence that Mariah had bruises, 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:11.760 which we know she did, that were at various stages 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:14.200 of healing. But we also have covered why they were there, 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:16.320 and that had nothing to do with Melissa except the 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:18.240 fact that she was not in control of her own 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:22.320 life at that point, right, and Norma Jean Farley, again 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:27.159 as a chief forensic pathologist, testified that Mariah's death was 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:30.359 the result of blood force head trauma. She continued that 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:33.880 it must have occurred within twenty four hours of death, 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:35.919 and that it would have been immediately apparent that Mariah 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:38.760 was in distress and in need of medical attention. Now, 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:43.840 Farley testified that Mariah suffered multiple contusions to her head area, 0:23:43.920 --> 0:23:48.480 but somehow she was magically able to rule out that 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:50.840 the strikes to the head were not the result of 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:54.120 tumbling down the stairs. Now, I don't think she witnessed 0:23:54.119 --> 0:23:56.639 the tumbling down the stairs. So again, how in the 0:23:56.680 --> 0:24:00.080 world would she know that, Well, she wouldn't, but this 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:04.320 is probably what she thought that the authorities wanted to hear. So, 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.159 just so we're clear, Melissa's defense did put on the 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:10.240 stand an expert named doctor Curry. 0:24:10.240 --> 0:24:14.040 Correct, Yes, they did. But when they qualified doctor Curry 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:17.040 as an expert, since he was a pediatric neurologist, he 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:20.000 was not a forensic scientist, and so they did not 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:22.680 allow him to testify it regarding the source of any 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:26.000 of her other injuries anywhere below the neck. And so 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:28.240 because the defense didn't hire a better expert or more 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:33.000 appropriate expert. They were not able to counter the state's 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:38.040 case that all of these prior injuries were from being 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:41.359 beaten repeatedly over a period of weeks or months. But 0:24:41.560 --> 0:24:46.520 he did contradict Norma Jean Farley's testimony in the timing 0:24:46.680 --> 0:24:49.239 of the head injury that caused her death. Norma Jean 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:52.080 Farley had said that the injury had to have occurred 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:56.240 approximately twenty four hours prior to her death. Doctor Curry, 0:24:56.280 --> 0:24:59.919 who was a pediatric neurologist, testified that it could have 0:25:00.040 --> 0:25:03.120 occurred earlier than that, you know, anywhere from forty eight 0:25:03.119 --> 0:25:06.199