July 8, 2008 - 10:42PM

By ALLEN ESSEX, Valley Morning Star

Melissa Elizabeth Lucio burst into tears Tuesday as a jury in 138th state District Court found her guilty of the beating death of her 2½-year-old daughter.

Lucio, 38, continued to sob as all 12 jurors were polled and individually told Judge Arturo Cisneros Nelson that they had voted to find the Harlingen mother guilty of capital murder for killing Mariah Alvarez on Feb. 17, 2007.

Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos said he will seek the death penalty today when the punishment phase of the trial begins at 9 a.m.

It was always the plan of his office to seek the death penalty against the mother of 14 for battering her little girl to death, the district attorney said.

"When we started the case, that's why we had to go through three weeks of (individual interviews of potential jurors)," Villalobos said, declining to comment further.

During his final argument, lead defense attorney Peter Gilman said it is not true that his client had confessed to a Texas Ranger that she had beaten her daughter to death.

"They think they got a confession," Gilman said. "Nowhere in that statement does it say, ‘I killed my child.' ... Three doctors testified that she could have died from blunt force head trauma by falling down the stairs."

His client was grilled by police from about 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. after likely rising at 6 a.m. the day before to take care of a house full of children, Gilman said. She was not accompanied by a lawyer, he said.

"My client is not up for Mother of the Year. She's guilty of child abuse," Gilman said. "But they haven't proved she intentionally murdered her child."

His client told police she was told Mariah had fallen down a flight of stairs about 24 hours before her death and described the exact symptoms she would have suffered from hitting her head in a fall, Gilman said.

Lucio said she wasn't present when her daughter fell because the family was moving from an apartment on Madison Avenue in Harlingen to another apartment on Lee Street, Gilman said.

His client agreed to take a polygraph examination and police took samples of her hair, fingernail clippings and a DNA mouth swab, Gilman said. But none of those samples were tested, he said.

Lead prosecutor Alfredo Padilla urged the jury to ignore claims that Mariah's death was caused by a fall down some stairs.

He asked the jury to review photos that showed her battered and bruised body and to remember testimony by experienced doctors who called it the worst case of child abuse they had ever seen.

Assistant DA Maria De Ford asked jurors to use their common sense and review the long list of bruises, lacerations and even a broken arm that Mariah suffered during the 88 days that she lived with her mother after living for two years in foster care.

"It was no accident," she said of Mariah's death. "She beat her; she stomped her; she threw her. ... She pinched her little vagina. What kind of mother does this?"

After the court session ended Tuesday, Sonia Chavez, Lucio's younger sister, told a reporter that she found it was curious that the courtroom was filled with Child Protective Service workers during the entire trial.

"When we were conducting the funeral (for Mariah), there were lots of CPS people there," Chavez said. "Why were they all here and at the funeral when there are so many children who need protection and families that need help?"

Chavez also said that a Harlingen police detective was lying when he testified that he had heard Lucio say during a cellular phone call that it was she, not her husband, who killed Mariah.

"She was making that call to me," Chavez said. "(Lucio) never said those things he said she did."

Lucio's husband, Robert Antonio Alvarez, 37, will stand trial separately for injury to a child by omission, prosecutors said.

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor