Summary
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| The State of Texas vs. Melissa | |
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| Directed by | Cyril Thoma Sabrina Van Tassel |
| Written by | Sabrina Van Tassel |
| Produced by | Philippe de Bourbon Isaac Sharry Sabrina Van Tassel |
| Starring | Norma Jean Farley Peter Gilman Bobby Lucio Daniella Lucio Diane Lucio Esperanza Lucio Melissa Lucio Rene Lucio |
| Cinematography | Cyril Thomas |
| Edited by | Damien Bois |
| Music by | Christophe Lapinta |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Alba Films FilmRise |
Release date |
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Running time | 102 min. |
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| Languages |
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State of Texas vs. Melissa is a 2020 French-American documentary by Sabrina Van Tassel. The documentary follows the case of Melissa Lucio, a Texan woman who was the first woman of Hispanic descent in Texas to be sentenced to death. It was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020, and won best documentary at the Raindance Film Festival. As of 2021 [update] , Lucio has been on death row for 13 years, having been convicted of the abuse and murder of one of her children. The rights were acquired by Hulu, for streaming in the US. [1]
On February 17, 2007, paramedics were called to a residence, where an unresponsive two-year-old child, who later died, was found. The child's mother, Melissa Lucio, was arrested and convicted of murder due to evidence of abuse. [2] A 2011 appeal against the conviction was denied. [3] However, due to trial court interference in the accused's right to present a defense, the sentence was unanimously overturned in 2019 by a three-judge panel of the Federal Appeals Court. [4] However, the full court in 2021 ruled that the conviction had to be upheld for procedural reasons "despite the difficult issue of the exclusion of testimony that might have cast doubt on the credibility of Lucio's confession", [5] and the death sentence was upheld. [6]
In January 2022, Cameron County officials signed an execution warrant for Lucio, scheduled for April 27, 2022. [7] On April 25, 2022 the Texas Court of Appeals granted a stay in Lucio's case and remanded it back to trial court. The court found merit in four of Lucio's claims for clemency. [8]
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The documentary received overall positive feedback, with an 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes. [9]
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty in 27 states, throughout the country at the federal level, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in the other 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 of them have authority to execute death sentences, with the other 7, as well as the federal government and military, subject to moratoriums.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment under the criminal justice system of the United States federal government. It is the most serious punishment that could be imposed under federal law. The serious crimes that warrant this punishment include treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
Capital punishment in Malaysia is used as a penalty within its legal system for various crimes. There are currently 27 capital crimes in Malaysia, including murder, drug trafficking, treason, acts of terrorism, waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, and, since 2007, rape resulting in death. Executions are carried out by hanging. Capital punishment was mandatory for 11 crimes for many years. In October 2018, the government imposed a moratorium on all executions with a view to repeal the death penalty altogether, before it changed its stance and agreed to keep the death penalty but would make it discretionary.
Christa Gail Pike is an American convicted murderer, and the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States during the post-Furman period. She was 20 when convicted of the torture murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at age 18.
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment unparoled. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
Raymond George Riles is an American convicted murderer who was on death row in Texas from 1976 until he was resentenced to life imprisonment in June 2021. At the time of his resentencing, Riles had been on death row longer than anyone else in the United States. He was convicted of the December 1974 capital murder of John Henry, a Houston used car salesman. Riles was ruled competent to stand trial in the 1970s, but while on death row he was repeatedly found to be too mentally ill to execute.
Rodney Rodell Reed is an American death row inmate who was convicted on May 18, 1998, by a Bastrop County District Court jury for the April 1996 abduction, rape, and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old resident of Giddings, Texas.
Melissa Elizabeth Lucio is the first woman of Latino descent to be sentenced to death in the U.S. state of Texas. She was convicted of capital murder after the death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah, who was found to have scattered bruising in various stages of healing, as well as injuries to her head and contusions of the kidneys, lungs and spinal cord. Prosecutors said that Mariah's injuries were the result of physical abuse, while Lucio's attorneys say that her death was caused by a fall down the stairs two days prior.
Capital punishment in Malawi is a legal punishment for certain crimes. The country abolished the death penalty following a Malawian Supreme Court ruling in 2021, but it was soon reinstated. However, the country is currently under a death penalty moratorium, which has been in place since the latest execution in 1992.
James Demouchette was convicted and sentenced to death in Texas for the double-murder of two Pizza Hut clerks during a robbery in Houston in 1976. He later gained infamy as the "Meanest Man on Death Row" for his deviant behavior, which began when he fatally stabbed another inmate with a homemade knife. By the time of his execution in 1992, his case had attracted particular media attention and his case has also been used as an example by advocates of capital punishment.
Carl Wayne Buntion was an American man convicted of capital murder in Texas and sentenced to death. On April 21, 2022, at the age of 78, he became the oldest inmate to be executed in Texas and the state's first execution of 2022.
On July 6, 1984, in Elk City, Oklahoma, 7-year-old Layla Cummings was abducted, raped, and murdered by Richard Norman Rojem Jr., who was previously convicted and jailed for sex offenses. Rojem, who was formerly married to Cummings's mother before their divorce, was convicted of murdering Cummings and sentenced to death in 1985. Rojem, who failed in multiple attempts to overturn his death sentence, was incarcerated on death row for close to 40 years before he was executed via lethal injection on June 27, 2024, after the state parole board rejected his appeal for clemency.
Robert Leslie Roberson III is an American man convicted and on death row for the murder of his two-year-old daughter in 2002. Roberson was accused of shaking his daughter and causing her death, and was tried and convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2003. He has lost his appeals since.
On September 5, 1998, at Brownsville, Texas, an 85-year-old elderly woman named Escolastica Cuellar Harrison was robbed and murdered by a group of three men, who stabbed her 13 times with two screwdrivers and stole her money, and Harrison died from her injuries. Through police investigations, all three robbers were arrested, but before the trial process, one of them, Pedro Gracia, absconded while out on bail and he remains on the run till today.
On July 18, 1984, in Blackfoot, Idaho, 31-year-old Danette Jean Elg was murdered in her home after being stabbed and slashed 15 times. Her killer, Richard Albert Leavitt, also mutilated her body by removing her sexual organs. Elg's body was discovered several days after her murder. Leavitt was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Twenty-eight years later, on June 12, 2012, he was executed by lethal injection. Leavitt was the third person executed in Idaho since 1976 and remains the most recent person to be executed by the state.
On November 9, 1994, 33-year-old Farah Fratta was gunned down at her home in Atascocita, Texas. Investigations revealed that Robert Alan Fratta, a police officer and the estranged husband of Farah, had masterminded her murder by hiring two men to kill her, for which the motive was related to the unresolved divorce lawsuit between the couple and their fight for custody of their children.
On September 10, 1985, in Warren, Ohio, United States, 12-year-old Warren Boy Scout Raymond Fife disappeared after he was last seen going outdoors to meet his friend. When Fife's family discovered that he had not arrived at his friend's house, they went to search for him. The search lasted for more than four hours before Fife's father discovered his body at a wooded field behind a supermarket on Palmyra Road; Fife died from his injuries, presumably from a physical assault, two days after he was found. An autopsy report ruled that Fife's death was due to a homicide and it confirmed that the boy was raped before he died.