Texas lawmakers meet with woman facing execution

HOUSTON — A group of bipartisan Texas lawmakers on Wednesday visited a death row inmate whose execution they are trying to stop amid doubts about whether she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter. But Lucio’s lawyers say jurors never heard forensic evidence that would have explained Mariah’s various injuries were actually caused by a fall days before her death. After Wednesday’s meeting, Moody tweeted that, “She prayed with us & hugged us; today might be the last genuine human contact she has before the state kills her.” Efforts to stop Lucio’s execution have also received support from reality TV star Kim Kardashian West and from several jurors at her trial who are now expressing doubts about her conviction. In an op-ed published Sunday in the Houston Chronicle, juror Johnny Galvan Jr. said he believes jurors weren’t given all the information needed to make a proper decision and he now feels “deep regret” for sentencing Lucio to death. But in a footnote in the brief decision, 5th Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham called Lucio’s case “a systemic failure, producing a train of injustice which only the hand of the Governor can halt.” Lucio, 53, would be the first Latina executed by Texas since 1863 and the first woman since 2014.