Texas frontier justice has never been kind to minorities who happen to get caught up in state law enforcement’s cruel and merciless dragnet. But the level of political and judicial corruption on display in this new documentary—about the dubious murder trial of the first Hispanic woman, 48-year-old Melissa Lucio, to sit on death row in Texas history—simply boggles the mind. “The state of Texas wants to kill me…why?” asks Lucio early in the film, in a resigned, fatalistic tone. Back in 2007, Harlingen, Texas resident and mother of fourteen Lucio found her three-year-old daughter Mariah beaten, bruised, and unresponsive. Next thing you know, Lucio is in an interrogation room being harassed by a Texas Ranger who’s clearly trying to intimidate her into a confession of murder. In fact, these are the first disturbing images we see: footage of a belligerent officer barking accusations at Lucio, demanding to know exactly how she caused her daughter’s death.
From here, director Sabrina Van Tassel begins to slowly build a portrait of Lucio that’s in direct contrast to the cold-blooded killer that the Texas tumbleweed court tries to paint her as. Although Lucio is certainly no model parent—she’s involved with gangster boyfriends and drug dealers, was a drug addict herself, and eventually ends up homeless and having her children taken away by Child Protective Services—still, there’s simply no character-based evidence to back the idea of her being violent and abusive. Soon we learn that another of her daughters, Daniela, claims that she witnessed Mariah fall down a rickety flight of stairs just outside their apartment building: what’s more, there’s the further suggestion that Alexandra, another of Lucio’s daughters, actually pushed Mariah down the stairs in a fit of sibling hatred. Yet, amazingly, none of this testimony was allowed to come out in court.
Although the documentary itself seems evasive on many aspects of this murder case, what is not left in any doubt are the reasons why the court was so quick to convict Lucio: the local district attorney, Armando Villalobos, was a stone-cold criminal. He’s now serving thirteen years for bribery and extortion, receiving $100,000 to essentially rig criminal trials in the interests of certain powerful local interests. Although narratively Van Tassel’s film isn’t always a beacon of clarity, we are at least given the reassurance that, in fact, Melissa Lucio may soon finally get the retrial she deserves. Recommended. Aud: C, P.