John Lucio undertook a visit to Gatesville on Thursday unlike any he’s done before.
“This time it’s been very emotional,” said the eldest child of Melissa Lucio, the first Hispanic female on death row in Texas. “I don’t even know what to say.”
Wearing a black “Free Melissa Lucio” T-shirt, John Lucio spoke to advocates and media Thursday morning via the Zoom teleconferencing app as he was driven by his wife Michelle to the Mountainview Unit, the state’s prison for female criminal offenders.
Melissa Lucio, 53, has been on death row since 2008, when a Cameron County jury found the Harlingen mother guilty on one count of capital murder in the 2007 death of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez.
“This visit isn’t going to be like every other visit,” he said through tears on Thursday. “Like I said before, everytime I come over here, I’ve hidden the pain. I hid it all, I mean. We can no longer hide it. We’ve got to let her know—we’ve got to let it out with her.”
Melissa Lucio denies killing the toddler, who had bruises and injuries and various stages of healing at the time of her death, according to authorities and court testimony.
In January, Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz described the physical evidence the prosecution has held up as proof of abuse and murder.
“The condition of Mariah’s body indicated that she had been severely beaten,” Saenz said. “There were bruises in various states of healing covering her body, there were bite marks on her back, one of her arms had been broken, probably about two to seven weeks prior to her death, and she was missing portions of her hair where it had been pulled out by the roots.
“Her autopsy revealed bruised kidneys, a bruised spinal cord and bruised lungs. The emergency room physician testified that this was the ‘absolute worst’ case of child abuse that he had seen in his 30 years of practice.”
However, John Lucio and others maintain that Mariah Alvarez died after falling down stairs at the family’s apartment, and have been advocating for a stay in her execution, slated for Wednesday, April 27 — less than a week ahead as John Lucio drove to see his mother. Barring a stay, commutation of sentence or an order of a retrial, Melissa Lucio could soon be moved to Huntsville for lethal injection.
The last day for media to interview Melissa Lucio before her execution date passed this Tuesday. She declined all but one media visit, granting an interview only to EFE, a news agency from Spain, according to a prison official.
John Lucio had been visiting his mom with more frequent regularity of late, being able to use money from a GoFundMe account to help pay for the approximately eight-hour one-way trip from the Rio Grande Valley to the prison in Central Texas, north of Austin. He said the funds have helped him visit his mother this year as if she were only 20 minutes away.
John Lucio turned the camera on the road as the Gatesville incarceration facility came into view beyond the vehicle’s dashboard.
“We need to speak real with her,” John Lucio said, “and not the way I’ve been hiding the pain. As I’ve told all you guys, we don’t show her pain and we don’t show her fear, and it really has eaten me up a lot doing so. It’s just been tearing me up, holding it in, and I can no longer do that.”
This day would be a different visit, he said again.
John and Michelle Lucio were scheduled to visit Melissa Lucio for four hours Thursday, four hours Friday, six hours Monday, and six hours Tuesday.
Barring legal action, Texas will execute Melissa Lucio by lethal injection in Huntsville on Wednesday.
According to advocates on Thursday’s call, more than 8,000 letters had been mailed to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
A Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles official told The Brownsville Herald on April 8 that a recommendation to the governor for any stay or commutation in the case would have to come from a vote by board members “two days before the execution date at 1 p.m. unless determined otherwise by the Chair.” Gov. Greg Abbott could then act on the board’s recommendation.
In a contentious committee hearing April 12 in Austin, District Attorney Luis Saenz vowed he would request the withdraw of the execution warrant, if any defense motions were pending and no other authority had yet halted the planned execution.
This week, Saenz has declined all interviews with media regarding this case.
Death Penalty Action’s executive director, Abraham Bonowitz, asked John Lucio what he would say to Saenz if he could talk to him at that moment, at the gates of the prison.
“I would want to tell Luis Saenz, please, like he said at the meeting in the (state) Capitol, please do what he said. If no one else stops the execution date, to do as he said he would do,” John Lucio said. “He said he would stop the execution himself. So I would say, please, please stop the execution.”
With a heavy breath, John Lucio ended his plea and soon ended his part of the virtual address.
He changed his shirt and entered the prison to visit his mother.
