a woman is set to be executed in texas
that's next week for allegedly uh
killing her own daughter her name was
mariah
there's some evidence in the situation
though that points to this potentially
not happening the way that they said
happen let's get to some of those
details from the guardian so next
wednesday pending a last minute stay
melissa lucio who's 52 years old should
be executed for a crime that significant
evidence suggests that she did not
commit not only that
but significant evidence also suggests
that the crime for which she would be
strapped into a gurney and injected with
lethal drugs never happened in the first
place so
a mounting body of intelligence uh much
of it never heard at trial some of it
actively suppressed by prosecutors and
not surprised to see that points to a
very different conclusion though mariah
was not beaten to death by her mother
she died of internal injuries from an
accidental fall uh so april 27th is of
course the date as i was saying next
week they're looking to execute her and
some of the problems with the way the
evidence was uh collected and gathered
and specifically um
this confession that they said they got
was a little bit of an issue though so
over almost six hours stretching late
into the night
they applied uh to lucio the notorious
reed technique and that's a
controversial interrogation method that
has led to numerous wrongful convictions
in the united states
so
as this interrogation happened she was
in a very vulnerable state there was
other things that happened to her was
outside of just her own child
two hours earlier than that mariah had
died so think about the trauma you must
be going through things in your mind
about that but she's also pregnant with
twins
and she was experiencing the grief from
losing uh the young toddler there so um
as trained to do their as trained to do
under the system the officers put their
faces within inches of lucille's
screaming at her that she quote had to
know what had happened to her child they
had lots of evidence
that she was to blame for that death is
what they said and they forced her to
view photographs of the girl's lifeless
body as well horrific stuff then as the
read method dictates they abruptly
switched their tone they gently
reassured her that she could uh quote
put this to rest if she would only
confess to having
caused this toddler's death lucio
insisted over 100 times that night that
she was innocent but they went through
five hours of aggressive maximization is
what they call it and minimization is
the technique as the technique is known
and she reached her breaking point so
eventually says i don't know what you
want me to say i'm responsible for it i
guess i did it and there's that
confession
uh this coerced confession so as she was
also being interrogated uh by cameron
county detectives in a separate room in
the police station some of the other
some of her other children she had nine
children at the time were also being
questioned they told investigators that
her mother had never been abusive or
violent in any kind of way and also the
children said that two days before
mariah had died they'd seen their
sibling accidentally fall down a steep
flight of stairs on the outside of the
house with it that they were renting
lucio who had been busy getting uh
getting the children ready for school
found the girl at the bottom of the
stairs crying and um
since then
after that two days passed uh there was
a lot of sleepiness a lot of uh um
a lot of sluggishness from the little
girl which would suggest a brain injury
potentially from that fall where she
didn't see her and picked her up later
as she was getting the rest of the kids
ready for school so then after that
within that time frame she then uh
passed away there's other issues here
with this trial but we'll get to some of
those thoughts but first of all just
what we saw these holes in in this story
and also holes in the way that they
interrogated uh this woman
um and actually put a lot of traumatic
images in front of her as she was doing
it um
and now this has gained all this
attention because we've seen this story
a little bit too many times jake yeah so
look uh some of you wonder like uh
jank why were you republican what did
you believe back in the day and so
that's a long story but i bring it up in
this context because um yeah when i was
republican i believed in death penalty
okay um so why did i stop believing in
the death penalty uh because uh the
innocence project showed that uh we were
consistently killing people who hadn't
done it uh so at least four percent of
the people at least uh on death row uh
were exonerated by dna evidence they
definitely did not do it so we were
going to kill those people dozens of
people
um and thank god that we found out ahead
of time
look we shouldn't even convict someone
unless we know beyond a reasonable doubt
that's our standard that's our legal
justice system
let alone put them to death
you read the whole story here
no reasonable person would be sure
beyond a reasonable doubt that she did
it let alone executing her that's nuts
so now there's another thing that i used
to believe when i was a republican that
it turns out not to be true and that is
confessions so are all confessions uh
false no of course not a lot of
confessions are are accurate right
but it i used to think a confession is a
confession i mean like
who would confess to killing someone if
they didn't well it turns out the answer
is a lot of people it's this is a
well-known psychological uh phenomenon
and so
people who have confessed have later
been proven absolutely innocent by dna
evidence so this has happened so many
times there's even if there's you know
studies on it etc there's no question
that it happens and how and why does it
happen it happens just like this where
the person says no i didn't do it over
100 times
and then they wear them down
psychologically in fact it reminded me
of one of the interrogations
that the cia did under dick cheney
of
a squadron suspect of 911 they wanted
him to admit that iraq did it but he
kept saying but iraq didn't do it and
then they were going to bury him alive
they say they were pretending to bury
him alive but he certainly believed it
because he'd just been tortured ad
nauseum and then he said almost
identical to the woman in this case i
don't know what you want me to say do
you want me to say iraq did it okay iraq
did it right they're like good that's it
all right take him out we got what we
wanted and and so a third thing i didn't
know i had no idea when i was a kid how
abusive police are i'm just gonna keep
it real sometimes they do this technique
and they get
someone who actually did it to confess
okay great i'm not saying they should
just teach you know play
treat everybody with kid gloves right um
i'm from the school keeping it real
right
but they decided in this case that they
were going to convict her no matter what
the kids were saying she didn't do it
uh there's all and you look back at it
now there's overwhelming evidence that
she didn't do it by the way a lot of it
was kept from the jury five jury members
now say now that we saw the real
evidence hell no hello we weren't even
convicted let alone execute her right
so guys be careful what you see i mean
we i when i was growing up a little bit
older uh all the media always told me
that the cops always tell the truth and
that the system is great and it works
perfectly not perfectly but but it's my
god we have a great justice system and a
confession is a confession if a cop says
something it definitely happened
anybody really still believe that and so
we cannot execute this woman this is
insanity and one piece of good news
before we go to bridget shockingly some
republicans agree uh 32 republican
legislators in at least one of their
houses and i think
a handful of senators republican
senators in texas as well are saying
maybe being pro-life also means we don't
kill the wrong person
maybe okay
bridgette yeah i completely agree i
think that the officials in this case
just flat out made some racist sexist
assumptions that lucille had to be an
abusive mother they didn't even let her
really mount a full-fledged defense and
it sounds like they just refused to
listen to any of the evidence or present
any of the evidence concerning what
actually happened and i just want to add
that you know we know that what as is
typical of women who are in prison or on
death row lucia has experienced lifelong
sexual abuse and domestic violence and
also suffers from ptsd and so you know
we have seen this story time and time
again where women are victims of this
type of coercion from police just like
you said but the good news is that we
have won clemency for sexual violence
survivors before um folks like santoya
brown and tennessee and i really truly
believe that we have time to do it again
for melissa if you go to we are
ultraviolet.org or ultraviolet's twitter
account we actually have a petition that
folks can sign demanding clemency for
melissa because as you said it sounds
like she is a victim of a lot of
horrible things and that the police just
made a lot of racist sexist assumptions
assuming that she must be a terrible
abusive mother even though her own kids
saw what happened and said no no she's
never hit us she's never abused us and i
think yeah we've just seen this story
too many times where police are just
adamant that this person must have done
this crime despite all of this
overwhelming evidence that no crime was
actually committed police work has to be
something that's uh hard because you
have to find someone almost the needle
in the haystack you have to have this
skill to discover what happened and put
together the crime if you don't have
that don't do it instead they're like we
have a conclusion we just have to find
some kind of way to get there it doesn't
matter as long as we get there and also
by the way if we're worried about her
children and children and maybe the one
that they say that she killed or allowed
to die whatever it is that they said
she has nine children
what are they thinking about those other
uh kids that she's got what what happens
to them when you wrongfully convict and
then uh execute their mother since we
care about our kids so much what's gonna
happen to them and then after they go
through whatever system they go through
and then they end up with ptsd and they
become adults that don't know what's up
from down as far as this world and who
they can trust then what happens they
don't care they got their conviction
and so i i definitely want to double
down on what j.r is saying there so race
is definitely a part part of this it
presumably uh
informed their decision
without the evidence that she did it
right so if they had walked into and
class is also an issue if they'd walked
into a fancy home with a white mother in
a really nice neighborhood would they
have made the same assumption i'm not
sure they would have but
i would say eq at least as relevant a
factor is laziness
finding the r what actually happened
this this is right afterwards right
afterwards doing a real investigation
and then if you at the end of the
investigation after talking to the kids
collecting the evidence you being it
says oh it really was her and then you
know you grill her i get it right
no they grilled her from minute one
they did they walked in and said okay
good enough it's usually the mom or
something or whatever reason and by the
way one of the reasons that the cops
stayed and they were so sure of it is
she had her shoulders down and wasn't
showing much emotion when they walked in
that was your evidence it's incredible
how lazy they are
they're just like who cares put her away
just murder her let's move on and guys i
don't say that lightly
the government of texas is set to murder
her next week
so now let me tell you why she might
have had the reaction that she did and
this is not me talking to experts that
said it so first of all she was sexually
abused when she was six years old and
then in order to escape that situation
she had a
she was married off at 16
and that husband then committed
tremendous domestic violence against her
so as a person who has suffered from
domestic violence sometimes they shut
down in traumatic moments so that might
explain her initial reaction not that
that initial reaction should have led to
anything anyway any assumptions anyway
but it also could explain why she
finally gave in to her new abusers the
police who are psychologically
tormenting her and she's used to
unfortunately in her really really hard
life
men abusing her than her having to
consent to it
and that's almost exactly what happened
here and right wing you hate big
government right
big government is about to kill her
you're pro-life right
big governor is about to kill her it's
not theoretical she's a real human being
and they're gonna kill her next week
you can't let that happen you just can't
whether it's signing the ultraviolet
petition it's uh calling your republic
republican legislators in texas to get
more of them to join you've got to put
pressure on greg abbott
uh to do a reprieve here and and not
uh at a bare minimum don't execute her
and let's readjudicate this case
at a bare minimum thanks for watching
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