Saying that recent events in Texas’ attempt to execute death-row prisoner Melissa Lucio had shaken his faith in the criminal legal system, an influential Republican state legislator has said that he would now support a moratorium on executions in the state.

In an April 29, 2022 interview on WFAA-TV’s Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely, Representative Jeff Leach (pictured), co-chair of the Texas House of Representatives’ bi-partisan Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, said “every option [for death-penalty reform] will be on the table, every tool in the toolbox,” including potentially a moratorium on executions.

Leach, who was one of the founding members of the reform caucus, was the driving force behind a bipartisan legislative effort that resulted in majorities of both the Texas House and Senate signing letters calling for the commutation of Lucio’s sentence. On April 25, 2022, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Lucio’s scheduled April 27 execution and directed a Cameron County trial court to hear evidence on claims that she may be innocent of charges that she murdered her two-year-old daughter and that her conviction was the product of prosecutorial misconduct and false testimony.

In the Inside Texas Politics interview, Rep. Leach said: “We’ve got to look at every part of our system, and Melissa’s case, where the system failed her at every turn, is a great example of that.”

A self-described “pro-life conservative,” Leach said that the near execution of Lucio without consideration of her strong claims of innocence “rocked” him and showed him that “it’s important going forward that we get this right for all other cases.”