For eleven years in the United States, Melissa Elizabeth Lucio has been locked up in a Texas prison. She was sentenced to death for killing her daughter, according to US authorities. Sabrina Van Tasel, a Franco-American filmmaker, met this woman and produced a documentary about her story: “The state of Texas against Melissa”.
In this documentary by Sabrina Van Tasel, Franco-American director, recounting the life of Melissa Elizabeth Lucio, sentenced to death for having killed her daughter according to American justice, one moment is even more moving than the others. The one in which the 48-year-old woman announces, with tears in her eyes, that she is waiting for eleven years on death row in a Texas prison, having left behind 14 children.
The first meeting between Sabrina Van Tasel and Melissa Elizabeth Lucio dates back to 2017. “At first, it seemed like an ordinary case of child abuse, where a poor drugged mother attacks her child.”, says the director. But he obtained an exceptional document: the seven hours of interrogation of Melissa Elizabeth Lucio in front of the police. “This woman who had never been arrested by the police before had no chance to survive”, adds Sabrina Van Tasel. During the four-day trial, no family members or children were allowed to testify. According to the director, there is collusion between Melissa Elizabeth Lucio’s lawyer and the prosecutor who accuses her.