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The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to issue six subpoenas pertaining to the Melissa Lucio capital murder case, state court documents reflect.
According to the application for the subpoenas, the testimony of these six witnesses “is material for the state” in the Lucio trial.
Three of the subpoenas have been issued, according to court documents.
The DA’s office is seeking to issue subpoenas for South Texas Behavioral Center, McAllen Behavioral Hospital, C.C.I Therapy Counseling Centers, Jesus Juarez, Cheryl Gates Spears and Jesse Applewhite, state court documents reflect.
The application for the subpoenas was filed Monday.
Lucio, a Harlingen mother, has been convicted of killing her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez in 2007. Although Lucio had been scheduled to be executed on April 27, she was granted a stay of execution.
Lucio’s attorneys maintain that she did not kill her daughter and that her daughter’s death was the result of a fall down a flight of stairs.
A Cameron County jury in 2008 found her guilty on one count of capital murder for causing the death of Mariah. The little girl had been beaten, according to prosecutors. Lucio denies killing her daughter.
On the night of Mariah’s death on Feb. 17, 2007, Lucio told police and EMS personnel that Mariah had fallen down some stairs, according to federal court documents.
During an interview with a Texas Ranger, Lucio later said she was responsible for her daughter’s death. Her appeals attorneys said she was coerced into making that statement.
According to Vanessa Potkin, of the Innocence Project, Dr. Michael Laposata, chairman of the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas branch at Galveston, found that at the time of Mariah’s death she had indications of a disorder called Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation that causes extensive bruising.
A fall that Mariah experienced down the flight of stairs is “precisely the type of trauma that lead to DIC and DIC can cause profound bleeding and bruising. It can occur quickly and throughout the body with no additional trauma whatsoever,” Potkin said. “In patients with DIC even routine handling at home or in a hospital setting can cause significant bruising.”
“DIC associated bruising can be and has been like it was here incorrectly attributed to child abuse. The jury that convicted and sentenced Melissa to death never heard this explanation for Mariah’s bruises,” she said.
Lucio remains on death row in Gatesville, Texas.
