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March 23 (UPI) -- Attorneys for a woman on death row in Texas for the death of her daughter have applied for clemency, saying prosecutors relied on bad medical evidence in the case. Melissa Lucio, 53, is scheduled to be executed April 27 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah in 2007. Police said Lucio confessed to beating her daughter to death, but her lawyers said witnesses and evidence showed the girl accidentally fell down a flight of stairs.
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On Tuesday, her lawyers filed an application for clemency to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and hope Gov. Greg Abbott will spare her the lethal injection.
Lucio's lawyers said she's innocent of her daughter's death and that Mariah fell down a flight of outdoor stairs while the family was moving to a new apartment.
Court documents indicated the girl was known to have a "mild physical disability" that made her unsteady while walking and had had fallen before. They said the child appeared uninjured after the fall, but she didn't wake up from a nap two days later.
Lucio's attorneys accused prosecutors of discounting "medical and scientific evidence" indicating Mariah's death was accidental. Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project, said after Mariah's death, doctors discovered she had a disorder that causes extensive bruising, information that was never shared with jurors in the murder trial.
Prosecutors told the jury the bruising -- along with evidence of an arm that was broken weeks before -- was proof that Lucio physically abused Mariah.
Disseminated intravascular coagulation "associated bruising can be and has been -- like it was here -- incorrectly attributed to child abuse," Potkin said during a news conference Tuesday. "The jury that convicted and sentenced Melissa to death never heard this explanation for Mariah's bruises.
"An innocent woman was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death based on false, unscientific evidence. Person after person made the unfounded assumption that Melissa was an abuser and refused to consider any evidence to the contrary."
Potkin said police pressured Lucio to confess during an interrogation within hours of the death of her daughter.
Lawyers said Lucio repeatedly told police she didn't kill her daughter, but officers yelled at and berated her. They said she was vulnerable to what they described as a coercive interrogation technique after years of abuse and trauma.
"While pregnant with twins, Melissa was subjected to a 5-hour, late-night and aggressive interrogation until, physically and emotionally exhausted, she agreed to say, 'I guess I did it.' Melissa suffered a lifetime of sexual abuse -- starting when she was only 6 years old -- and domestic violence, which made her especially vulnerable to the police's coercive interrogation tactics," Potkin said in a February filing that sought to have Lucio's execution date withdrawn.
Lucio's lawyers also took issue with the trial judge's decision not to allow defense attorneys to present expert witnesses who could have testified about how her past trauma may have influenced her confession.
If executed next month, Lucio will be the first woman put to death in the United States since Lisa Montgomery in January 2021. She'd be the first woman executed in Texas since Lisa Coleman in 2014 and the first death row inmate in Texas this year.
