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The Future of Public Safety is Now

EJUSA HomePage Photo

What is safety?

For centuries elected officials and lawmakers nationwide have grounded the notion of safety in police, prosecutions, and prisons. But are these truly the foundations of safety? 

When we explore the idea of safety more deeply, we understand that the traditional meaning — based on the absence of harm, danger, or injury — does not fully represent what safety means to a community and only perpetuates punitive approaches.  

That has to change. 

Black, Brown, marginalized, and poor communities live with the daily impact of this harmful interpretation of safety. For so long, law enforcement has translated that interpretation by disproportionally targeting these groups, all in the name of “public safety.” A deeper understanding recognizes the white supremacist roots that encourage a “safety” rooted in fear and punishment rather than healing and thriving.  

The Newark community has for years been building a movement to put the public back in public safety by embracing a broader understanding of safety. Long-time residents and grass roots activists have channeled the trauma, grief, and anger that decades of violence and police oppression produced, along with the love, hope, and resilience present within the community, into healing-centered solutions — and the passion to make them reality. 

On behalf of our partners — the Newark Community Street Team and Newark’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery — we are proud to publish a chronicle of that evolving movement: The Future of Public Safety: Exploring the Power & Possibility of Newark’s Reimagined Public Safety Ecosystem.

Newark activists during 24 hours of peace.
Credit: Newark Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery

The movement started as pure activism: community members tired of seeing their friends and family members killed or harmed. They demanded change. Some identified specific needs in the community and built solutions to the root causes of violence. The strategies started to complement each other and have a real impact. 

These strategies weren’t necessarily new. But they didn’t fit inside the dominant paradigm because they are rooted in the dignity of each person rather than the “good people” vs. “bad people” frame central to our punitive approaches.The leaders driving these alternative strategies are challenging that dominant paradigm. They are expanding the notion of safety beyond the absence of violence and danger to make the presence of well-being and the infrastructure to support it essential to public safety. 

The Future of Public Safety captures the stories of Newark’s people, the trauma that inspired them to seek change and the hope and commitment that turned ideas into a working ecosystem of solutions. 

We release this report now to lift up the work that has been happening for generations in Newark because other cities can learn from Newark’s journey and replicate the successes. The need is urgent. The future of public safety is now.

Jamila Hodge, Executive Director
Will Simpson, Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives

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Fearless Advocating

Paster Cook with one of the youth she's helped

Pastor Gwendolyn Cook was a preacher before she became a fierce advocate for young women swept into sex trafficking. As a preacher she had the unique position of supporting her congregants in their lowest moments, including while they are in prison. The individuals that stood out to Pastor Cook the most were young girls.

Pastor Cook serves the Camden, NJ, and she is the newest member of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network. She serves a special role on the network because she has many years of experience helping youth. Her gift for accessing the needs of young people made her uniquely positioned for helping young girls.

Most of the youth she served were survivors of sexual assault and sex trafficking. After visiting almost 50 girls over a number of visits in a female juvenile prison, she says, “I couldn’t believe there were so manly little girls in that situation.” On the ride home, she couldn’t stop crying from the weight of all the girls she had just seen. Even through her tears, Pastor Cook thought, “How can I help them?”

She started mentoring girls in a local juvenile facility in 2009. Her advocacy then began to expand when she realized that children all over New Jersey needed help.

Pastor Cook recognized the risk from increased gang activity, drug distribution, and overall crime and knew that she needed to pray for the youth and find a way to support them. The need became even more apparent when the violence reached her own family. Her niece was swept up into sex trafficking.

Pastor Cook’s solution was to create an organization that acted as a crisis unit. Women Walking in the Spirit (WWITS) Girls Mentoring Program isn’t a 9 to 5 organization,” Pastor Cook said. “Crime doesn’t happen that way.” And she’s right — especially in Camden, a city well-known for its poverty and struggles with violence. The city’s need for trauma-informed care is essential.

WWITS gets refers from courts, police, and schools, and community members for girls that might be at risk of being involved in the justice system.

The organization’s goal is to try and connect with the girls before they become victims. One of the ways Pastor Cook does is by “mentoring the whole family.” Sexual violence can be a generational trauma, and in order to help the girls, the whole family has to receive support.

Her relationship with EJUSA first started when we worked together to frame a narrative for WWITS’s work and build a program model so they could gain new funding sources.

In the future, Pastor Cook wants to build an art institution. She believes kids are put into environments, like the gray blank walks of public-school classrooms, that subconsciously prepare them to be in prison. Instead, kids should be in an environment that urges them to be creative and free.

She first collaborated with EJUSA to help build the framework for her organization and find resources for funding. And so far she’s benefited from learning about applying for grants and working with Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. Working with EJUSA has expanded beyond anything she could have possibly thought she could do for the children of her community.

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Remembering a Victory for Justice

three women sitting next to each other

Ten years ago, the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy signed a bill ending the state’s death penalty. This victory was the result of years (decades, really!) of organizing and advocacy, and I was lucky enough to be on the frontlines of the final couple years of that push.  

There are so many people and events that made repeal possible, but on this anniversary, I want to share the story that I often tell when presenting to classes or bragging to friends how cool my work is. It’s the story of a mother, outside a courthouse, knocking on the door of a news van with a clear message: “My son matters, too.” This woman, and this refrain, were crucial to the demise of the death penalty in Connecticut.  

The woman is Vickye Coward. Her son, Tyler, was murdered in 2007. That same year, Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters were killed in a home invasion. The trials for the two men who murdered the Petits and the man who killed Tyler took place at the same courthouse, at the same time. Tyler was a Black kid from the inner city. The Petits were white and from an affluent neighborhood. One of these cases got far more attention than the other. 

While Vickye attended the trial for the man who murdered her son, news vans swarmed to tell the story of the Petits. Vickye felt pain for both her son and the Petit family. And she was frustrated that only one of their stories was being told. The Petits had become a household name; Vickye wanted Tyler remembered as well. When the press paid no attention, she started knocking. “My son matters, too.”

Her advocacy on behalf of her son became a news story. Then I went knocking on Vickye’s door. She welcomed me with open arms and an infectious smile, and then rolled up her sleeves. 

Vickye knew that the death penalty was exacerbating the disparities she saw in the system: Some cases received much more attention and resources. The loss of white women was far more likely to be considered worthy of the ultimate punishment than the death of a black man.  Instead of helping grieving families heal, the current system fed them lies about punishment as closure. 

three women sitting next to each other
(From left to right) Vickye Coward, Fran Watson, and Colleen Cunningham before the Senate vote in 2012.

Vickye and other family members of murder victims were the backbone of the campaign to end Connecticut’s death penalty. They had to be. 

In 2011, we thought we had enough votes in the legislature to pass the bill, but at the 11th hour, a senator changed her mind. Dr. Petit, the lone survivor of the high profile home invasion, had come to talk to her. He was adamant that the men who killed his family be executed. Citing his pain, the bill died that year, and the future of Connecticut’s death penalty was framed as a question about murder victims’ families. 

For years murder victims’ families in Connecticut had been sharing their beliefs about the death penalty. But Vickye and a core team decided they could add more voices and share a clear message: regardless of how one personally feels about the death penalty,  the system harms murder victims’ families. The strategy worked. 

The murder victims’ family members in Connecticut set out – with grace, compassion, and fierce determination – to educate lawmakers and the media of the many ways the death penalty inflicts harm on surviving families. Vickye was at the helm of this – writing op-eds and letters to her local paper, hosting press conferences, having small group meetings with lawmakers, speaking at community events, and mobilizing 179 Connecticut murder victims’ family members to sign a group letter in support of ending the death penalty. 

The result was that Connecticut became the 17th state to end the death penalty. They also forever changed the way media and the public framed how the death penalty harmed murder vicitms’ families. After the Connecticut campaign, news stories and common wisdom said, “of course murder victims’ families oppose the death penalty, look at what a rotten process it is for them.”

This work rippled beyond Connecticut to other state campaigns to end the death penalty. And so did Vickye. After the victory in Connecticut, I started working intensely with the team in Colorado. One of the first things we did was fly out Vickye to meet with Colorado murder victims’ families. Vickye’s story, and the story of the Connecticut win, inspired a core group of Colorado murder victims’ families who were instrumental voices for Colorado’s 2020 repeal. 

Vickye is also a part of EJUSA’s Trauma and Healing Network. This network of local leaders share their experiences with trauma, healing from violence, and how they are doing the work of reimagining the justice system. Just the other day, Vickye told me she’d met a grieving mother in her new hometown and was helping her make connections to healing services. 

Throughout the Connecticut campaign, Vickye and the other murder vicitms’ families would explain they do this deeply painful and personal work because they don’t want any other families to suffer the way they have. That selflessness and clarity of purpose cuts through the noise of a controversial debate where so often people have long-held positions they don’t want to reconsider. A mother, knocking on a door to make sure people understand  “my son matters, too,” can change history. That’s something to celebrate 10 years later. 

Stay tuned. Later in May we will bring together voices from the Connecticut repeal campaign, including Vickye, in a webinar to reflect on what we’ve learned from the campaign and the 10 years of repeal efforts since then.

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Healing Communities through Trauma to Trust

Lionel LaTouche interview screenshot

A vision of a world where violence is rare is EJUSA’s north star. As we work toward making that vision a reality, we must address the violence that over-policing inflicts on Black and brown communities — which sows enduring fear and distrust.

We invite you to watch a short video on Trauma to Trust, our groundbreaking initiative in Newark, NJ, that moves us toward this vision, by exploring and healing the trauma that policing so often inflicts.

Youtube video screenshot

 Trauma to Trust video

As a supporter of EJUSA, you know that our criminal legal system — fueled by racism and a fixation on punishment — creates and aggravates trauma.

Trauma to Trust reduces the harm caused by such trauma. Community members and law enforcement spend 16 hours together, delving into a series of difficult but necessary conversations about the​​ impact of police violence on communities of color. At the end of the training, residents and police officers report greater trust, empathy, and mutual understanding.

We thank Chubb for making this video possible and for its support of the soon-to-be-launched Trauma to Trust program in Baton Rouge, LA, and other efforts to replace a system anchored in retribution with one that produces healing and true safety for everyone.

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Where is the death penalty movement today?

scales of justice statue

The prospect of a death penalty repeal has never gotten as far along in Ohio as it has this year. So it seemed like a great time to bring together Jennifer Pryor, Director of Organizing & Community Outreach at Ohioans to Stop Executions, and Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program Director at EJUSA. They discussed the evolution of the death penalty movement over the past 17 years. 

To put it plainly, a lot has changed. In 2005, leadership that supported executions. Today, national and local leaders vocally condemn capital punishment. Executions have decreased to just over a third of what the numbers were in the past.

National support for repealing the death penalty has grown every year. Many more people are being vocal about being against executions fundamentally. Historically, a call for innocence or obvious racial bias has dictated the wave of support.

There’s a clearer understanding that racial disparities in the death penalty run throughout the criminal legal system. Visit our YouTube Channel to listen to their conversation.

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A Review of Who We Are

who we are movie poster

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a focal point during the Civil Rights Movement, I had been to museums and monuments around the city that honor activists and organizers from the sixties. I’ve read every plaque, and I know every story where a Black person was denied access to a building during segregation. 

The steps leading up to my school were the very same steps that a mob beat Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth for trying to enroll his daughters into John Herbert Phillips High School, a white school at the time. 

I can give you directions to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, point out one of A.G. Gaston’s old buildings, and recite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Each story, legacy, and struggle permeated my everyday life in both obvious and subtle ways.

As I got older, I became aware of the evolution of anti-Black racism over the years. The familial relation between American slavery and it’s offspring — mass incarceration, poverty, death penalty, and others — became clearer.

As I sat down to participate in a virtual screening of Jeffery Robinson’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, I was skeptical that I would learn anything new about our country’s history of racism.

My issue was that I kept being left with the same unanswered questions. How do we reconcile what’s been going on for centuries with what people of color are still suffering from today? And, I had yet to watch anything that fully answered my questions.

The documentary opens with Robinson, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, giving a lecture on Juneteenth about anti-Black racism in the U.S. The platform reminded me of a TEDTalk, so I was excited to see the visual aspects of his speech. 

To reduce his lecture down to its bare bones, he argues that America, the country that we love, was founded on anti-Black racism, and the effects of that are pretty obvious.

He draws a line from Virginia laws that allowed the death of an enslaved person while resisting a master, and the death of Black people today killed while resisting arrest by a police officer.

Throughout his talk, there’s footage of him traveling to lynching sites and institutions that were built by enslaved people, showing the remnants of our racist founding. 

The most troubling part of the documentary was his conversations with supporters of the confederacy. The individuals he met with were unaware of how enslaved people were treated and the true cause of the Civil War. As books and media that tell the full picture of America are banned, I fear that the gap between the truth and the people is widening.

Many of the reviews of this movie call it a necessary watch. Whenever a retelling of our history is in the form of a movie or a series, it’s called “necessary.” To their credit, the reviewers are just trying to express how much they think viewers would benefit from watching. However, every other piece that comes out on a streaming platform can be considered “necessary” or a “must watch.” 

What’s the difference between Who We Are and, say, a show like Bridgerton, that is considered a “must watch”? 

The thing that’s standing between us as Americans and true change, is our inability to reckon with our history. Until we do that, there will always be a block. So Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America isn’t “necessary,” it’s a step in removing that block.

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A Personal Experience with Trauma to Trust

people talking at table

When someone joins the EJUSA team, the organization works to get them to Trauma to Trust quickly to experience the exploration of trauma and its impact on people and communities. My turn came in the fall of 2021.

I hit the road, in central New Jersey, at 6 a.m. to get to the training center in Newark early. I was excited to lend staff support to the team as they delivered a unique, innovative training in a challenging session.

I should back up and give a little context. EJUSA’s Trauma to Trust (T2T) program is a 16-hour experience that creates space for community residents such as survivors of violence, formerly incarcerated people, and community activists to have a guided conversation with local police officers. The goal is to reduce harm in the relationship between police and communities of color by increasing empathy, mutual understanding, trust, and accountability that repairs through truth exchanges and learning about trauma.

Every training session is different, but I didn’t expect a potentially traumatic incident to intrude on the work at hand. Our program leader, Lionel Latouche, had his wallet stolen on his way to the session. The experience could have thrown the team off track, for understandable reasons. But the power of a trauma-informed space quickly became evident. 

Tracee Thomas, T2T’s project manager, called the EJUSA team — including Zayid Mohammed, our Newark strategist, and Dr. Monique Swift, a former full-time staff who serves as a session facilitator — back to center as we stood facing each other outside the training room. 

Tracee led us through grounding techniques and created a sense of safety — crucial when a person is involved in a traumatic situation, regardless of their perspective. We didn’t just learn about trauma, we experienced collective healing together. We did some deep breathing. Each of us shared a word that we would be holding throughout the day. I felt myself relax. 

Lionel arrived just a few minutes into introductions, and he and Dr. Swift kicked off the session with a bang. My nerves dissipated as I started soaking up the learning. 

Dr. Swift first talked about the three E’s of trauma. Individual trauma is a result of an event that a person experiences that has a lasting adverse effect. So, for instance, a childish scare in a hallway might be an event that you experience, but may not have a lasting impact. However, if hallways continue to scare you, then we would call that a traumatic event.

We shifted to learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This theory suggests that these traumatic events, specifically in childhood,increase the likelihood of being impacted by a decreased lifespan. We talked about marginalized groups such as Black women, the largest growing group of incarcerated individuals. Their incarceration is often preceded by sexual trauma, hence the notion of a “sexual abuse to prison pipeline.”

You could feel the tension loosen as the community members and police officers leaned in for a Minute Earth video on the science of epigenetics. We learned that fear can change your genetics and impact the chemicals that affect your DNA, as evidenced by a study of Swedish families who suffered starvation. Our T2T cohort included Black and Brown people who collectively nodded as we heard the term “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.”

By the middle of the day, everyone was eager to dig into locally sourced lunch from Newark’s BurgerWalla. Sharing a meal feels crucial to the process of breaking down barriers and creating common ground. Officers and community members were tentatively sharing jokes as they ate and drank. The day continued with more intensive learning.

We returned to the training center the following Wednesday for another eight-hour day. At this point, people were familiar with each other’s faces. I felt a warmer vibe as we served breakfast and coffee. Attendees were already asking Tracee who would be catering lunch because they knew she’d selected another all-star local vendor. Community members and officers got excited when they learned that  Irvington’s KB’s BBQ Smokehouse was on the menu. 

Having laid a solid foundation and understanding of trauma in session one, session two focused on equipping participants with trauma-informed responses to incidents of violence. 

T2T participants started to open up about the trauma they experience in their respective roles. I teared up as I heard one community advocate talk about the trauma of seeing a loved one’s dead body treated disrespectfully by the police. The pain was palpable, even years later. Another community member was finally able to express his deep grief about losing a childhood friend to gun violence. He had never had the space to express the pain. 

My heart ached when I heard a police officer talk about watching a woman take her last breath as her toddler nephew stood by, then having to go to his own home and greet his wife and kids as if nothing significant had happened. Dr. Swift probed the officer about how he felt. Finally, after deflecting for several minutes, he was able to articulate how traumatic that day had actually been. Trauma truly is everywhere. Once this officer reluctantly admitted to the psychological impact his work had on him, he also shared the fact that he struggled to get the support he needed. 

The reality is, officers often don’t have the time to properly heal. And there’s some stigma involved when officers do ask for that kind of support, which perpetuates the trauma cycle.That revelation caused many community members to gasp. Who would want their mental health held against them when being considered for promotion? This double-bind drew empathy from the whole room. Our current criminal legal system harms everyone. 

We could feel people changing their minds in that training center in Newark: we slowly moved from an “us versus them” paradigm, to a recognition of the universal need to heal from collective trauma caused by violence. We went from blaming individuals, to naming the present day systems and historical dynamics that cause us to lash out. We progressed from seeing punishment as the only solution, to imagining a system where safety is built through collective healing and non-punitive accountability. 

I think we all left that day feeling cautiously optimistic about implementing what we’d learned. I, for one, gained a trauma-informed lens that I’m confident will stay with me.

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Remarkable Women

women looking at water

Reimagining Justice This Month: February

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence — responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

Remarkable Women: Tonja Myles, NBC Local 33

In this spotlight on one of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network members, Tonja Myles, we can see what is possible when solutions come from the people who are most impacted by violence. As a survivor many times over, Tonja knows that people in crisis need community, not enforcement. That’s why she’s a leading advocate for the 988 crisis line, a national alternative to 911 that goes straight to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 

Not Another Child: Mother Turns Grief into Solutions for Gun Violence, Grieving Families, Mississippi Free Press

Oresa Napper-Williams is connected to a growing network of women meeting the needs the current justice system fails to address. Mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and daughters are bringing empathy where law enforcement too often only blames young Black people for the harm they experience. They’re also building legacies of humanity where the legal system ignores and further hurts communities. From harm reduction to grief support, and healing circles to wrap-around services, these women are breaking cycles of trauma and creating equity and safety through collective action.    

NYC Council Supports Movement to Expand Victim Compensation Eligibility, Pix11

Movements are powerful when they are led by the people closest to the problems that need solving. Survivors and victims’ family members gathered in New York City to tell their stories. They know intimately that in the wake of violence, people need pathways to healing, including financial support for unexpected hospital bills, mental health counseling, and replacing locks. They also know first-hand just how many barriers exist in the current system, especially for those who need support the most. Their voices are leading the call to expand access to victim compensation and create pathways to healing for all. (Bonus: if you’re in New York, you can add your voice, too, and learn more about the issue from our partners at Common Justice here).

In Case You Missed It: On the EJUSA Blog 

  • A Step Forward for True Justice — in the Director’s Corner, Jami Hodge shares her thoughts on the groundbreaking nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • Failed By the System — read Sarah Craft’s call for all of us to act to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio, whose experience epitomizes the cycles of violence perpetuated by the criminal legal system.

 

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Podcasts on the Possibility of Justice

close up of silver microphone

Recently, the New York Times emailed about “6 true-crime podcasts on the dark side of romance.” These six podcasts, they tell us, are “true stories of abusers, liars and romantic con artists who ruthlessly exploit their victims’ desire for love.” The descriptions of the stories follow a well-worn path, pulling us in with the intrigue of the perfect victim and the dangerous individual, drawing us closer with the promise of power struggle as the definition of relationship, and selling us a picture of justice as punishment.

The list was actually published weeks ago, but it must’ve gotten noticed enough, because now it’s the hook to sign up for this Times list called Love Letter. It’s the kind of clickbait that’s not surprising in a society where too many women experience violence, and publishers too often cater to the supposed human interest in violent, often sensationalized stories. 

Nor is it surprising that the New York Times, with its massive platform and reach, is casually promoting deep narratives that uphold false solutions to violence.

This is the same New York Times that routinely publishes articles about violence and rising crime in the words of police chiefs, police union reps, and vaguely defined “experts” only. Story after story ignores and erases the voices of the people and community-based organizations working every day on the frontlines keeping communities safe. These articles peddle policing and incarceration as if they are and have always been the only possible solutions to violence. This is a narrative that relies on pervasive assumptions that human nature is violent, people are singularly responsible for and defined by the individual choices they make, and that punishment creates justice. And, frankly, it’s a narrative that ensures that the justice system will continue to fail communities most impacted by violence.

The truth is that those narratives – alongside narratives that Black people are scary, that youth don’t listen and are dangerous, and community suffering is moral failure rather than systemically produced – are constructed and reconstructed. Every day. Every hour. Every email we get from the New York Times, from Fox News, every time we turn on the local news, every time we check our social media feeds. 

To shift these narratives we need to do more than just repeat that the opposite is true. Instead, we need to change how we listen and who we listen to. Smart, compassionate, committed people who are excellent communicators have known and been saying for generations that violence has roots, causes, and solutions. Resilient, creative, dedicated people are caring for communities and building safety every day. A different world in which violence is preventable and in which people get what they need after something terrible happens isn’t just possible, it’s happening all around us already. 

The truth is that stories of people building safety, healing, and accountability that repairs are everywhere. We need only look and listen differently to notice that love and relationship is also a force for care, belonging, and safety. Every neighborhood that experiences violence is full of people to call when something happens, and even to stop something from happening before it does. Every city with rising violence during the pandemic is full of people and groups who have quelled that rise, grasping community safety at the roots and saving lives despite systems designed to fail them. 

Systems that create community safety are already here, emerging to meet needs wherever they are. Maybe these four podcasts can help us learn to better see them, to better listen, and to reflexively lift up the possibility of the safe world at the edges of our imagination: 

Decarceration Nation

Hosted by Joshua B. Hoe, this podcast lifts up direct experiences of those who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, as well as those who are building alternatives, in order to reimagine the justice system. Start with the conversation with Danielle Sered, Executive Director of Common Justice, to explore root causes of violence and solutions to breaking cycles of trauma. 

Freedom Dreams

Each week, the Freedom Dreams team interviews people creating safety, healing, and accountability that doesn’t rely on police and prisons. From stories about advocacy to stop the construction of new jails, to community-based violence prevention and intervention groups building safety, every episode offers deep looks into the work happening in Detroit and beyond. Start with episode five, on healing and reimagining community safety.

One Million Experiments

Solutions that are grounded in transformation instead of punishment are everywhere, and this podcast aims to showcase all of them. Every one of their short list of episodes features conversations with those building and leading community-based programs that are preventing violence, healing trauma, and creating safety without police and prisons. Start with episode four, on transforming responses to harm.

Abolition X

If you’ve ever wondered what people really mean when they say they are prison abolitionists, this podcast wants to give you answers. Hosts Richie Reseda, Indigo Mateo, and Vic Mensa sit down in each episode to talk to leaders in the anti-violence movement to find out how they came to this work and explore the approaches that are working. Start at the beginning.

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Failed by the System

Image of a judge's gavel.

Melissa Lucio is likely innocent, but Texas plans to execute her on April 27 anyway.

There’s a real risk that Texas might execute an innocent person next month.

Melissa Lucio was tried, convicted, and, in 2008, sentenced to death for a crime that likely never happened. Now, a broad coalition of organizations and experts are calling on Texas to stop her execution and review her innocence claims.

When Melissa was moving her family into a new apartment in 2007, her daughter Mariah fell down a steep set of exterior stairs. Although her injuries did not appear life-threatening, two days later Mariah went to sleep for a nap and never woke up.

The same day that her daughter died, the Texas Rangers interrogated Melissa for five straight hours until three in the morning. She was pregnant with twins, sleep-deprived, and isolated — on top of being in shock because of her daughter’s death. In other words, Melissa was susceptible to the coercive interrogation tactics being used against her — which have proven to regularly produce false confessions. Part of the aggressive and psychologically manipulative interrogation can be seen in a recent episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, in which he shines a spotlight on wrongful convictions.

Melissa’s case is another example of a person who was ignored and mistreated by systems that are supposed to help people — the police, public welfare, housing, child welfare, victim services, and more. She experienced decades of sexual and physical assault from male figures in her life, from her uncle and stepfather to her husband. Her requests for help fell on deaf ears. But then something absolutely horrible happened to her.

Texas chose to execute Melissa and continue pouring resources into a system that doesn’t heal anyone or make communities safer. Those funds could instead have gone towards the systems that might help Melissa and others like her, preventing future tragedy.

Melissa Lucio will be executed on April 27, 2022, unless ​​Cameron County’s new district attorney, the courts, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and Gov. Abbott review Melissa’s innocence claim. Take action with the Innocence Project to say: Stop the execution of Melissa Lucio.

Melissa’s case highlights just how misguided the death penalty can be. Tell Texas not to make a devastating and irreversible mistake.

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