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Melissa Lucio should have been executed today, but two days before that happened, the 53-year-old mother of 14 was given a second chance.
For 14 years Lucio has been sentenced to death for the 2007 death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah.
But she had defended her innocence by saying the little girl had died from an accidental fall and not from “beatings and torture”, as prosecutors in Texas claimed.
Her cause was protected by both her children and some well-known names in the world of spectacle.
Before her execution was delayed by the release of new evidence, the BBC spoke to her family and supporters
In 2007, Melissa was having a difficult life with her husband Robert Antonio Alvarez and 12 children, while she was pregnant with twins.
The family lived in extreme poverty, her lawyer Sandra Babcock told the BBC.
“Electricity was cut off, they were relocated more than 20 times in a five-year period and only neighbors or churches had access to water.
During one of these relocations, on February 15, 2007 – Melissa’s two-year-old daughter was injured
According to Melissa herself’s statement to police, the girl was left without adult supervision as her parents were busy. At that time the family lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor.
Melissa told police she had found her daughter Mariah crying on the stairs, with little blood on her lower teeth. She had not seen any other wounds so she went on with her day.
Two days later the father called the police as Mariah was no longer breathing.
He had fallen asleep in his parents’ bed but never woke up.
Melissa had been questioned by police about her daughter’s death for five hours, being given food or drink.
Her lawyers said the guilty plea had been obtained under duress and that there was an ‘urgency’ to convict Melissa.
She was a poor woman from the Latin minority living in South Texas, with a court-appointed lawyer who by mistake caused an unfair trial, which sentenced the defendant to death.
Giving today the decision to suspend the execution the court of appeal in Texas said that Melissa deserved an analysis of the errors in the initial trial, as well as new information that has emerged during the years she has been in prison.
Several activists in the US have defended Melissa’s case as comedian John Oliver, and most recently Kim Kardashian who sent a letter to the governor of Texas, signed by the nine children in her life, to save her life.
Some local media are still convinced of the guilt of the woman, who has had a history of drug abuse and some of the children have been placed in foster care.
But the attention came from trial errors and the ban on what would have been the first execution of a woman of Hispanic descent in Texas in modern times.
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