Former Justice Minister Robert Badinter on Tuesday (April 12th) called for the pardon of Melissa Lucio, an American on death row in Texas who is currently enjoying a wave of international support as her execution approaches.
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“I’m asking the Texas authorities for Melissa’s life. To do otherwise would of course be sacrilege.“, but also “a shocking injustice“said the architect of the abolition of capital punishment in France, in a video published by the association Together against the death penalty. Sentenced to death for the murder of her daughter after a controversial trial, Melissa Lucio has claimed her innocence for 15 years and is due to be executed on April 27.
This 53-year-old American-Mexican has received a lot of support in recent days, both from American reality TV star Kim Kardashian and former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, who considers her the victim of a “miscarriage of justice“. A recent hit documentary, “The State of Texas vs. Melissa“, popularized his cause. He insists on the exculpatory evidence in favor of this mother, whose two-year-old daughter was found dead in 2007 at home, covered in bruises, a few days after falling down the stairs.
Confessions “completely extorted”
At the time, Melissa Lucio had 12 children and a history of drug use and sexual assault. Immediately suspected of having hit her daughter, she deniesalmost a hundred timesin front of the police before dropping “completely extracted confession“, according to the director of the documentary, Sabrina Van Tassel. During the trial, the handicaps of the girl, likely to explain her fall, had not been taken into account by the experts, according to her defense, which ensures that the bruises could have been caused by a blood circulation disorder. None of Ms. Lucio’s children had accused her of being violent.
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Former Keeper of the Seals of François Mitterrand, Robert Badinter fought all his life against the death penalty. In October, he launched, along with Emmanuel Macron, an appeal in favor of his “universal abolition“. The French president has promised a “meeting at the highest level» in 2022 for «to convince» the countries that still apply it. More than 100 countries have abolished the death penalty by law, for all crimes, according to Amnesty International. And they are 147 to have abolished the death penalty in law or de facto, that is to say nearly three quarters of the States in the world. In the United States, 23 American states have abolished it and three others (California, Oregon, Pennsylvania) observe a moratorium.