John —

I’ve never met Melissa Lucio, but we have a lot in common. Both of us lost our babies. Both of us were hauled into police interrogations mere hours after their deaths, still numb and in shock. Both of us were coerced, convicted of murder, and sentenced to die for killing our children — something we didn’t do.

The difference between Melissa and me, is that I was lucky enough to get a new trial. My attorneys were able to show that my 9-month-old son, Walter, died from a hereditary kidney condition. There was no murder, and after six and a half years in prison, I was cleared of any wrongdoing.

But Melissa has been on death row in Texas for 14 years, and unless she is granted clemency by the governor, she will be executed on April 27 for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter — a crime that never actually occurred.

The Innocence Project is fighting to stop that from happening. Will you join them by signing the petition or texting SAVEMELISSA to 97016 to call on the State of Texas to stop Melissa’s execution?

Melissa’s daughter, Mariah, died two days after tragically falling down a flight of stairs at their home while in the process of moving.

Until you have walked in our shoes, there is no way to know how you would react after losing a child — or how you would react to being accused of killing them. For me, it was an out-of-body experience. After four hours of being berated while trapped in an interrogation room, I just wanted them to stop. I was tired. I was broken. Finally, an officer handed me a statement that said I had hit my baby and that’s what killed him. I resisted in the only way I could. I signed my name in the wrong place on the confession.

The police also used these same coercive interrogation tactics on Melissa. They took her into custody on the night her daughter died and aggressively questioned her for hours. Melissa, who was pregnant with twins at the time, asserted her innocence more than 100 times. But after more than five hours of unrelenting, hostile questioning, she told officers, “I guess I did it.”

As her clemency application states, Melissa has a low IQ, struggled with addiction and poverty, and is a survivor of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Two nationally recognized experts in false confessions who reviewed Melissa’s case have said that her cognitive impairments and history of trauma made her especially vulnerable to manipulative, intimidating interrogation techniques.

I pray that Melissa lives. I pray that she can be with her children and grandchildren again. And I hope that she will get the opportunity to tell her story in her own words like I did.

The truth is, the deck is stacked against women like us. Women who are poor, isolated. Women of color. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can put a stop to Melissa’s execution. It’s the right thing to do. There is still time to avoid making this horrifying mistake.

So please, take a moment to sign the petition calling on Texas to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio or text SAVEMELISSA to 97016 to see how you can get involved.

Thank you so much,

Sabrina Butler-Smith
Exonerated in 1995