The Case of Karla Faye Tucker

Following are selected excerpts given to LifeWay Church from Karla regarding events just prior to the tragic manslaughter.

The Significance? In Texas capital punishment is only to be applied in cases of clear premeditation!

by Karla Faye Tucker

© 1990, LifeWay Church

"When I left Steve, Shawn and I got an apartment together at Quay Point, in Houston. Eventually Shawn became the assistant manager, and we didn't have to pay rent — but at first I paid the rent. it Then one weekend in 1981 when I was in Midland working a "spot," (a place you work for a week or two as a call girl) Shawn met Jerry Lynn Dean. When I came back into town they were there in our apartment.
"As I walked in I was greeted by a Harley Davidson motorcycle in the middle of the floor, leaking oil on my carpet! I'd been married to a biker, so I understood that. It was just that---coming home from out of town, doing what I was doing — I was ready to come home, crawl in my bed and rest for a week. But here sat this motorcycle in the middle of my floor, leaking oil on the carpet, and upstairs in bed were Shawn and Jerry.
"It just hit me wrong at that point — it wouldn't have at any other time, but at that particular time it hit me wrong. I threw him out. I came home another time and he was there, so I threw him out again. One other time he was sitting in his car outside, and I punched him in the eye for just being there.
"All that stuff happened because of the type of person I was. It didn't have a thing to do with Jerry or Shawn. It had to do with me. From that point on, because of the kind of person I was, because of the drugs I was doing, I didn't give them a second chance. He was probably a nice person. I just held that grudge from the very first day and never gave him a chance. Never wanted to see him, never wanted to talk to him. Every time I saw him, which wasn't very much, I just went off on him.
"Other things happened, too. I had moved out and was living with my sister while I looked for another place. Shawn kept some of my stuff there, and one day she got mad at me for something and took a knife and stabbed at my mother's pictures. That was the main thing, the thing that always made me hate her. They were bunches of old family photos, and at the time, I thought they were the only pictures I had of my mother.
"Eventually, they got married. I told Shawn that was fine, just to never bring him around my house. I told her, 'You're welcome anytime, but he's not!'
"In January of I983 I met Danny Garrett (age 37) at the office of a "pill doctor" — a physician who took illegal payments to prescribe drugs to addicts. Danny was a bartender at a swinger's bar. He had once been a hi-class bartender, making drinks at bars like the one on the roof of the Galleria, inside a fancy hotel. He had been good, but he had 'gone down.'
"Danny and I began living together within two weeks. It is a small brick house with a garage in front, between the house and the street. Across the street is a ditch, then a sand pit, which was filled with water. I used to go swimming in the sand pit, despite the "No Swimming" signs. By then, my drug use had escalated to heavy heroin, meth-amphetamine, synthetic opiates, uppers, downers and the ever present pot and booze.
"Shawn was one of the many people who shared the house with us. She had left Jerry in 1983 because he was a wife-beater. This last time he punched her, he had busted her nose and lip. She came to me and told me she was through with fighting. I saw what he had done to her, and I was really mad. I was really protective of her, Shawn knew that Karla was going to take care of it. Some way or other, she thought, I'd go punch him out — which is what I wanted to do. I thought, 'Yeah, I'll get even with him!'
My idea of getting even with him meant confronting him, standing toe to toe, fist to fist.
"The talk was already going on, and Shawn and I were right there in the middle of it. Jerry was custom-building a Harley Davidson, and the talk was that the best way to get back at Jerry was to steal his motorcycle. Anyone that knows anything about bikers knows that a Harley Davidson is a man's kid, his love. If you mess with that, you're really messing him. So we thought, 'OK, we'll steal his motorcycle to get even with him.'
"Shawn had as big a part in this as anybody. She was talking like she had as much a right to the motorcycle as he did because they were married, what type of property she had rights to, what she'd get out of a divorce. Talking about insurance and the kids. That's how all that talk got started about stealing his motorcycle.
"Being in the radical crowd that I was in everything snowballed. Shawn, Danny and I, and all the other sick-minded people that were in that crowd , started talking about stealing the motorcycle, using, the parts, how I could build a motorcycle of my own from some of the parts. You talk about stuff, and people start talking and acting tough. I just kept going like that.
"However, that's as far as it got, it was all a bunch of big, bad dope talk. You sit around in circles like that and you talk about things that never really develop, never turn into anything but talk. I was told that Jerry had a $300 contract out on me, not to kill me, but to bum me with a torch he kept on his T.V., but I didn't take it seriously — it was just talk.
"I can remember going with Shawn to her apartment to get some of her clothes packed up. We went while Jerry was gone, so we wouldn't get in a fight while we were there. I don't even remember going in her apartment because of all the carbitols I had iust taken.We had just been to my pill doctor, where I got a bunch of pills which I immediately ate.
"I had passed out by the time we got to the apartment, so Danny and Shawn carried me into the apartment and laid me on something. After Shawn got a bunch of clothes Danny helped her carry them out, then they carried me out again. I wasn't even aware I had been there.
"Danny and I had not known each other for too long so we wanted to get all the friends from each side to accept the other ones. On Danny's birthday, April 25, 1983, friends came from everywhere, ready to party.
"It turned into an orgy, but Danny didn't mind. After all, he had the same kind of friends! He worked at a private swinger's club where they had organized orgies on Wednesday and Saturday nights! This was nothing new to either one of us.
"As the party got under way, I got real sick. I had bad intestinal problems, and my one remaining ovary was giving me a hard time, not to mention the cramps I was having from gas. So neither Danny nor I participated in the activities that night. We were the only ones that didn't! My sister Kari had a blast, and wanted to have a party just like it for her birthday.
"My divorce from Steve became final in May of 1983, and I got my maiden name, Tucker, back. For Kari's party, we had been doing a lot of drugs — every kind. We had been shooting heroin, my personal preference, which, along with pot, was everyday thing. At the same time we were doing a variety of pills-- dilaudids, placidyls, valiums, perc , mandrex, somas and wygesics.
"On top of all that I had been doing a considerable amount of coke and bathtub speed. I didn't usually do speed much, heroin and downers was my preference, because I am a very hyper person and doing speed always "skitzed" me out — made me go crazy, and totally lose control. I was already so naturally "hyper" that even being around someone on speed caused me to be as wired as them or more. It was a natural wire, and no one would have ever thought I wasn't on speed.
"So I tried to keep away from speed. But we were cooking speed, and we started shooting it because it was there, and I loved the needle in my arm — what one would call a needle freak. We had been doing everything, and I mean "everything."
"We were selling coke. Jimmy Leibrant and Ronnie Burrell were making the speed so we had an overabundance of it. By the time Kari's birthday carne around I had been on a two-week 'run' (without sleep) of speed and cocaine, as well as doing all of the other drugs that I normally did.
"We had been doing all this stuff for weeks. But this particular night we had been on a run, doing speed, then dilaudids, then heroin then speed, then heroin, then dilaudids then speed. And downers and drinking, just mixing it all together.
"Kari's birthday party lasted for three days, three days of non-stop shooting speed , not to mention all the pills and booze and other stuff I was doing. On June 13th the party finally started subsiding, and by that afternoon, most of the people were gone. There were just a few of us left — Jimmy, Danny, Ronnie, Kari, Shawn, and I — maybe a few more, but I don't remember. Danny went to work that evening. Kari had to go make some money. I don't know where Ronnie and Shawn went.
"Jimmy and I were the only ones left. We shot several more papers of speed and were really flying high.
I had driven Danny to work that night. So about I:30 or 2:00 a.m., Jimmy and I rolled a few joints and headed out to pick Danny up from work. We got there, and he could see how wired we were. When we got back to the house, Jimmy and I did another shot of speed and Danny did one great big one to catch up. We were climbing the walls! I kept saying I was going across the street and go swimming in the sand pits. Jimmy kept pacing the hallway, talking, saying he had to find something to do before he wentcrazy. We were both going crazy and looking for something to do.
"Danny said, 'I know what we can do.' He sat down on the living room couch and commenced drawing a floor plan of Jerry's apartment. When he finished it, he showed it to Jimmy and me and started telling us his plan. We would case Jerry's apartment, see where every window was to his apartment, as well as the other apartments around his, see who had lights on, find out who might be out and about at that time of night. Jimmy and I were hip.
"After all, there was nothing else to do and we were going crazy. We dressed for the part. I put a black T-shirt on, black cap, jeans, black boots. Danny was dressed in motorcycle boots, blue jeans and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. He grabbed one of our twelve gauge pump shotguns from behind the couch as we headed out the door. We never went ANYWHERE without a weapon. We either had a shotgun behind the seat or a handgun in the glove box, or both. Danny ALWAYS carried his little .38 pistol in his boot.
"Although we were not going over to that apartment to actually go inside, at least not that night, it would have been stupid to go there and walk around at three or four in the morning and not have some kind of protection. You certainly didn't go to case a place out and not be prepared for unexpected trouble lurking around a corner. Besides, in our circle of friends, you were always prepared for unexpected occurrences. Jimmy grabbed a handgun on the way out the door, and stuck it in the glove box."

(Source: http://www.straightway.org/karla/karla.htm )

The husband of the woman slain by Karla Faye Tucker, burdened by his own feelings of guilt, has little sympathy for her fate.

By KATHY WALT

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle
For the past 14 ½ years, Richard Thornton has had plenty of time to reflect on the dumbest thing he ever said.
"No."
With that simple, one-syllable utterance, he refused his daughter's request to end a spat with his wife, Deborah. That night his wife left home, and before dawn was one of two people hacked to death by Karla Faye Tucker and Daniel Ryan Garrett.
"It was the stupidest (word) I ever said in my life," Thornton said Friday. Since then, Thornton has had to live with the fact that his last words to his wife of 2 ½ years were spoken in anger. Dejected, Deborah went to a party at a neighboring apartment in northwest Houston.
Thornton was later to learn that his wife and a man she met at the party, Jerry Lynn Dean, had been slain by Tucker and Garrett in one of Houston's most hideous crimes.
That was June 13, 1983.
"It has taken me 14 years to be able to tell myself I might not be responsible," Thornton said in a tearful interview.
And for the first time, Thornton said he now feels compelled to speak out against efforts by some people to convince the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. George W. Bush that Tucker's death sentence should be reduced to life imprisonment.
Tucker's execution is expected to take place early next year.
Upset by what he sees as some media efforts to portray her as a sympathetic character - one whose jailhouse religious conversion and gender warrant sparing her life - Thornton said he doubts Tucker's sincerity.
"People need to understand that Karla Faye Tucker murdered two people in cold blood," he said. "She is and was a horrible person. If she has found religion, then God bless her, because maybe the Lord will be more lenient with her than he would have otherwise. Maybe the last 14 years that she has been given to bring her affairs in order, to make the peace with the Lord - maybe they were necessary for someone who is that cold to find whatever peace she can. And I hope she has, I hope she's found peace.
"But she was found guilty, she was sentenced to death, she needs to die."
His words tumble out, scarred by grief, tinged with anger tempered by time and raw with a pain that he says will never heal.
He is not persuaded by Peggy Kurtz - Dean's sister - or Ronald Carlson, Deborah Thornton's brother, who have maintained for at least five years that they have forgiven Tucker and believe she is sincerely sorry for what she did.
"I am the only voice that Deborah Ruth Davis Thornton has left," the 48-year-old former heavy equipment operator said. Her mother died before her murder and her father was later murdered. Thornton has vigorously guarded his daughter and stepson from media contact and vows to do everything "legal and whatever to anybody who tries to get them."
"Their suffering is the greatest suffering in this whole affair," he said.
They were 14 and 12 at the time of the murders, and both still occasionally cry themselves to sleep, Thornton said.
Four years ago, when Tucker last had a date with death, Thornton had asked his daughter and stepson to write letters about what their mother's murder had done to them. Their statements were to be forwarded to the pardons and parole board should state officials consider commuting Tucker's sentence then. The courts postponed Tucker's execution, and Thornton held on to his daughter's letter. He never had the nerve to read it until Friday, and the raw wounds it exposed are too personal, too painful to share publicly, he said.
His stepson, though, could not even bring himself to put in writing what his life has been like since his mother's death.
"My son ... lost his mother in a way no child should ever have to comprehend," Thornton said. "It was the most horrific thing imaginable. ... I cannot imagine being 12 years old and hearing on the television that my mother was hacked to death with a pickax and the pickax was still embedded in her chest when they found her. Now that 12-year-old boy heard that, and as I tell it to you and you hear about it, we're adults. It is a heinous crime. It is terrible. But I'm not 12 years old, and it's not my mother."
Thornton said neither of his children finished high school, and both still frequently retreat into themselves, especially when Tucker's case makes news.
"Every single time something comes up, (they) relive it all over again," he said. "It's as if each time we hear (Tucker's) name, someone is killing my wife all over again."
That his wife may have had too much to drink and went home with a man she did not know to have sex is not lost on him.
"If that happened, then that happened," he said. "I don't think it happened, but I'm enough of an adult to understand that things like that happen."
Although he has remarried, he has saved mementos of his wife, Deborah, all these years - still clinging to a matchbook cover from an upscale restaurant the family had once visited and newspaper clippings about her murder.
And then there is the note, dated June 11, 1983, in Deborah Thornton's handwriting, the one in which she promises to love him forever, the one his daughter tried to give him the night before his wife was killed.
"I guess she gave it to my daughter that night to give me," he said. "I guess next time I see her (in heaven) I'll ask her."
He said Tucker's execution will bring some closure for him and the children.
The lasting impression he would like the public to have of his wife is that "Debbie was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"She did nothing. These people had no reason to harm her. She could have been told to get out. They chose to kill her and they took away a mother, a wife, a lover, a friend - somebody I didn't want to be without.
"I want them to know that she begged to die. She pleaded for the mercy of death. And these monsters kept on hitting her with a pickax."
He is still upset, that while Tucker and Garrett were convicted of murdering Dean, neither was ever tried for the slaying of his wife. He worries that may be a technicality that would prevent him from witnessing Tucker's execution, should it be carried out. But Thornton also is not certain he wants to watch her die.
"I can't say I hate Karla Faye Tucker," he said. "What she did was the wrongest thing that can be done. (But) when she leaves this Earth, I hope the next person she sees is my wife."
Does that mean he thinks Tucker will spend eternity in heaven?
"If the Lord as I know him is there, yes. I would hope that he would forgive everyone all of their sins. I don't know that. ... I would like to think God is merciful enough in his own right to do something for her.
"But my beliefs have always told me she would go to hell."

Sample Letter to Victor Rodriguez, Chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In Texas the Governor can commute a death sentence only with the recommendation of a majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The Texas State Governor has the authority to issue a one time 30-day reprieve in capital cases.
http://www.courttv.com/legaldocs/newsmakers/tucker/
The full text of the 150-page writ of Habeas Corpus filed on Jan. 20, 1998 by George Secrest and David Botsford on behalf of Karla Faye Tucker.
http://www.abolition-now.com/cases/botsford.html
A statement made by David Botsford, one of Karla Faye Tucker's lawyers, at the rally in Austin, Texas on January 17, 1998 in front of the Texas Capitol.
Links to other webpages about Karla Faye Tucker:
http://www.lifeway.org/karla/karla.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/01/23/us/us.3.html

The following is a sample letter to the Victor Rodriguez, the Chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles regarding executive clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. It is my personal opinion that a call for fairness and equity - that is, that each petitioner for executive clemency should have the right to confront, cross-examine, subpoena and present witnesses at an open hearing before all 18 members of the Board - is a stronger argument than simply requesting mercy.
Letters should be addressed to Victor Rodriguez, with copies sent to Brett Hornsby of the Executive Clemency Unit of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Mr. Hornsby should distribute the letters to the other 17 members of the Board. However, the names, addresses and telephone numbers for all of the Board members are available at http://www.abolition-now.com/tcadp/tbpp.html
Please send all letters urging commutation for Karla Faye Tucker so that they will be received no later than February 2, 1998.
Letters can be emailed to save-karla@abolition-now.com
They will be printed and hand delivered to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Executive Clemency Unit in Austin, Texas.
 
 
Brett Hornsby
Executive Clemency Unit
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
P.O. Box 13401
Austin, TX 78711-3401
(512) 406-5852
FAX: (512) 467-0945
Victor Rodriguez, Chair
San Antonio Office
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
420 South Main Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78204-1114
(210) 226-6862
FAX: (210) 226-1114
Dear Mr. Rodriguez,
The news media has reported you saying that commutation of a death sentence should be granted for only two reasons: actual innocence or a lack of due process. If this is incorrect, then my request is simple: I ask that you allow Karla Faye Tucker the opportunity to present her case for commutation before the full Board of Pardons and Paroles in person. In delegating authority, The People do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. Justice cannot be served except in the clear light of day. All requests for executive clemency in capital cases should be open and before the full Board. Anything less is in irreconcilable conflict with the ideals of fairness and equity.
If, however, you do feel that death sentences should only be commuted in cases of actual innocence or lack of due process, then I take serious objection. First and foremost, if there is actual innocence, then justice can only be served by an immediate and full pardon. To continue to punish someone who is innocent is reprehensible.
Regarding lack of due process, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Herrera v. Collins (113 S.Ct. 853 (1993)) that state executive clemency provides the historic remedy - the "fail-safe" remedy - for hearing of new evidence. And Karla Faye Tucker has new evidence to present that could not be heard by the courts. Clearly, it's not new evidence regarding her innocence of the heinous and savage murders of Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Ruth Thornton, but it's essential new evidence nonetheless.
Karla Faye Tucker has evidence that will prove against "whether there is a probability that ... [she] would commit acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society" - a necessary and sufficient test to demonstrate that execution is no longer just.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in conjunction with the Governor George W. Bush, has the obligation to provide the necessary checks and balances against injustice that cannot be remedied by the courts alone. A fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government holds to the principle that The People receive fair and equitable treatment by the government as a matter of law and not at the whim and sufferance of officials both high and low. Yet sufferance - the passive failure to intervene, to halt, to prohibit actions that are immoral, unethical, or wrong - is the exact description of the practices and procedures of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles regarding executive clemency.
Again, The People, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. Justice cannot be served except in the clear light of day. All requests for executive clemency in capital cases should be open and before the full Board.
Anything less is in irreconcilable conflict with the ideals of fairness and equity. Anything less is in irreconcilable conflict with the ideals of democracy. Anything less is in irreconcilable conflict with the ideals of the United States of America.

Excerpts from Karla Faye Tucker's letter

10:31 PM 1/20/1998

Though she has not formally filed a request to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker has written Gov. George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to plead her case. Following are excerpts:
"I am in no way attempting to minimize the brutality of my crime. It obviously was very, very horrible and I do take full responsibility for what happened. ... I also know that justice and law demand my life for the two innocent lives I brutally murdered that night. If my execution is the only thing, the final act that can fulfill the demand for restitution and justice, then I accept that. ... I will pay the price for what I did in any way our law demands it."
"I was advised by my attorneys to plead not guilty and I was trusting their legal expertise. They knew I murdered Jerry and Deborah. I did not lie to them about it. ... I am, in fact, guilty. Very guilty."
"I used to try and blame my mother because she was my role model and she fashioned and shaped me into what I was at an early age. ... At 14 she took me to a place where there was all men and wanted to
`school me' in the art of being a call girl. I wanted to please my mother so much. I wanted her to be proud of me. So instead of saying no, I just tried to do what she asked. ... The thing is, deep down inside I knew that what I was doing was wrong. It may have been the norm for the crowd I was in, but it was not the norm for decent, upstanding families."
"I no longer try to lay the blame on my mother or on society."
"I don't blame drugs either. When I share that I was out of it on drugs the night I brutally murdered two people, I fully realize that I made the choice to do those drugs. Had I chosen not to do drugs, there would be two people still alive today. But I did choose to do drugs, and I did lose it, and two people are dead because of me."
"I did not plan on going over there that particular night to go into that apartment to kill anyone. But that is beside the point. The fact is, we went there, we went into the apartment, we brutally murdered two precious people, and we left out of there and even bragged about what we did for over a month afterward."
"It was in October, three months after I had been locked up, when a ministry came to the jail and I went to the services, that night accepting Jesus into my heart. When I did this, the full and overwhelming weight and reality of what I had done hit me. ... I began crying that night for the first time in many years, and to this day, tears are a part of my life."
"I also wanted to try and send some money out to one of my victim's family members (it was for Deborah's son, for his schooling). ... When Ron Carlson came to me in 1992 and told me he had forgiven me for what I had done to his sister, I let him know I was trying to get some money to his nephew. He told me not to ... I would only be hurting him if I did send the money to him. And he told me that his nephew would not receive the money from me anyway because he wanted nothing to do with me. I understand the pain and I did not push."
"Fourteen years ago, I was part of the problem. Now I am part of the solution.
"I have purposed to do right for the last 14 years, not because I am in prison, but because my God demands this of me. I know right from wrong and I must do right."
"I feel that if I were in here still in the frame of mind I got arrested in, still acting out and fighting and hurting others and not caring or trying to do good, I feel sure you would consider that against me. ... I don't really understand why you can't or won't consider my change for the good in my favor."
"I don't really understand the guidelines for commutation of death sentences, but I can promise you this: If you commute my sentence to life, I will continue for the rest of my life in this earth to reach out to others to make a positive difference in their lives."
"I see people in here in the prison where I am who are here for horrible crimes, and for lesser crimes, who to this day are still acting out in violence and hurting others with no concern for another life or for their own life. I can reach out to these girls and try and help them change before they walk out of this place and hurt someone else."
"I am seeking you to commute my sentence and allow me to pay society back by helping others. I can't bring back the lives I took. But I can, if I am allowed, help save lives. That is the only real restitution I can give."

Editorials

The case of Karla Faye Tucker
By CAL THOMAS
(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Some strong advocates of the death penalty for first-degree murderers are having second thoughts in the case of a Texas woman convicted of the ax murders of two Houston people in 1983. Karla Faye Tucker, 38, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Feb. 3.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson is one of those who has come to Tucker's defense. Robertson believes that Texas officials should spare her life because she says she has been born again.
Rev. John Boyles of El Paso agrees. Boyles thinks that attention should be focused on what Tucker has become, not what she did, and that who she is now, not who she was 15 years ago, is reason enough to spare her.
There are several flaws with this reasoning. First, Tucker was convicted and sentenced to death because she and her then-boyfriend, Daniel Ryan Garrett, stabbed or bludgeoned their victims at least 20 times with a pickax. Tucker later told police she experienced an orgasm every time the ax landed, even after the victims were dead. The two had been on a drug binge for several days and had entered an apartment looking for money to buy more drugs when they were confronted by their victims, a man and a woman.
To allow people convicted of past acts to be absolved by future acts would ruin what is left of the criminal justice system. One of the ancillary benefits of having a death penalty is to force the guilty to confront their Maker in this life before they meet Him in the next and to make peace with God. To the extent that Tucker has done that, she will receive the reward given to all repentant sinners. But that doesn't mean that the state owes her less than any other convicted murderer should receive.
That leads to the second flaw in logic for those favoring a reprieve. Would Pat Robertson and John Boyles favor commuting her sentence if she had converted to some other faith, or, for that matter, if she had been of some other race or a man? Tucker is pretty, young, white and female - four characteristics that tug at the heartstrings of a culture that values them. Anyone doubting this should recall the reaction to the death of Princess Diana. How many homely, black, male or older convicts enjoy the defense of such high-profile religious leaders as the Rev. Robertson?
The third flaw is what message a reprieve would send, not only to convicted killers but to those who might be plotting murder. If all you have to do is claim you have been born again, "revival" will surely break out in the prison system, and, instead of filing petitions with lawyers, inmates will start sending letters to religious broadcasters and pack the prison chapels. There will be no way to discern which inmates are telling the truth and which are running a scam.
The death penalty is a way for society to validate the ultimate value of human life. It says that if you illegally take the life of another person, the only way society can ratify the value of that life is for your life to be forfeited. It depreciates life merely to deprive someone of liberty for murder. But in a culture that increasingly values life less at all stages (unless it is young, pretty, female and, for some, "converted"), why should some guilty lives on death row be protected if we are killing the innocents on "birth row" in abortion chambers?
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles should not grant clemency to Karla Faye Tucker unless there are extenuating circumstances - other than her conversion - of which we are currently unaware. If Tucker has truly been converted, she has already received the only pardon she will ever need.

Chronicle editorial: Governor should deal with Tucker case like any other
WEDNESDAY EDITORIAL PAGE, TOP EDITOR
7:23 PM 12/9/1997

One may or may not agree about the death penalty in Texas. Whether the state is ever justified in executing a person for crimes committed can be argued well into the night, and often is.
Some favor its use (most Texans do, according to numerous polls), some oppose it, while others change their minds from one side to the other depending on the case involved.
But if the state is to have a death penalty, which our state does, and if the juries and courts are to impose it on defendants, which they do, then it should be applied equally to men and women as fits their crimes, without regard to gender or religious conversions.
In the matter of Karla Faye Tucker, who is awaiting execution on death row for her participation in the particularly gruesome 1983 pickax slaying of two people in Houston, her punishment, including the possibility of Gov. George W. Bush commuting her sentence to life, should be handled the same as anyone else on death row.
The fact that she is a woman, that she is a born-again Christian, that she would be the first woman to be executed in Texas since the 1860s, should make no difference.
Tucker was tried and convicted. Her case has been appealed and affirmed. The fact that she has, in effect, become a new person in prison, that she has become a born-again Christian, that she has gained the support of many people, including the sister of one of her victims, may speak well of her.
But many people who have changed in prison, found religion and begged forgiveness for their crimes have been executed.
Nothing changes the fact she was involved in two gruesome killings, that she was lawfully tried and sentenced to death and that the higher courts have affirmed her conviction.
Gov. Bush may choose to commute her sentence, but that decision should not be driven by her gender or any religious conversion.

2:29 PM 12/19/1997
Texas editorial roundup
KARLA FAYE TUCKER
[Karla Faye Tucker's] supporters will argue that Tucker is a changed woman, a model prisoner who has found religion. They will say she poses no threat of future violence.
But is that reason enough to set aside her [death] sentence? Would it be reason enough if Tucker were a man? ... (The Galveston County Daily News)
... As a born-again Christian, [Karla Faye] Tucker may very well have undergone a dramatic change in prison. That's all well and good, and her story deserves to be told. It, however, cannot erase the enormity of her crime. The death sentence is not based on what Tucker has become; it's based on what she did. The question is whether she is to be held accountable for her actions.
The power to commute a death sentence should be reserved for cases in which there is a real question as to the guilt of the condemned person. In Tucker's case, there are no such questions. ...
(The Courier (Conroe))

Why So Many Want to Save Her
By S.C. GWYNNE /AUSTIN
Karla Faye Tucker is the nicest woman on death row. She is so nice, in fact, and so well liked by people who know her that it is virtually impossible to look at this attractive, sweet-natured, born-again Christian and imagine the gruesome crime to which she confessed in Houston, Texas, on June 13,
1983. Back then she was a drug-addicted prostitute who, during a weekend orgy with her boyfriend, had consumed an astonishing quantity of heroin, Valium, speed, percodan, mandrax, marijuana, dilaudid, methadone, tequila and rum. The two then took a pickax and hacked to death Jerry Lynn Dean, 27, her ex-lover, and Deborah Thornton, 32, his companion of the moment, while they slept. Tucker, who left the pickax embedded in Thornton's chest, boasted at her trial that she had experienced an orgasm with each swing of the ax.
She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to death. Fourteen years later, in the state with the busiest execution chamber in the land, Tucker now finds herself next in line to die. Barring a last-minute delay or commutation, on Feb. 3 she will be strapped to a gurney in Huntsville, Texas, and given a lethal injection that will stop her heart. If that happens, she will become the first woman executed in Texas since Chipita Rodriguez was hanged in 1863 for killing a horse trader--and the first woman in the U.S. since Velma ("Death Row Granny") Barfield was put to death in North Carolina in 1984 for poisoning her boyfriend.
There is no doubt that Tucker is guilty. She says so herself. What makes her case striking is not just her gender but also her apparently profound conversion to Christianity. The latter has prompted an unlikely cohort of supporters to come to her defense at the 11th hour, including Deborah Thornton's brother and Jerry Lynn Dean's sister, the homicide detective who put her on death row, several former prosecutors, televangelist Pat Robertson and thousands of citizens. Her staunchest supporter is Dana Brown, the prison chaplain she met and married two years ago - a relationship that has never been consummated, even by a kiss, because death-row inmates are not allowed contact with visitors.
Says Tucker's attorney, George ("Mac") Secrest: "If ever there was a case for commutation, this is the one."
Skeptics respond that jailhouse conversions are both commonplace and not relevant in deciding who receives a pardon. And in spite of efforts to save her, it seems unlikely that either the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles or Governor George W. Bush, who must concur for a sentence to be commuted, will block her execution. Bush, a law-and-order Republican facing a re-election campaign this year, would seem to gain little politically by such a move. Moreover, there simply are not the requisite legal questions or doubts about her guilt that might prompt commutation. Pardon has never been given to anyone in Texas based on religious conversion.
None of which will make it any easier to watch the pleasant, earnestly friendly Tucker become the 145th person killed since Texas resumed the death penalty in 1982. She has said repeatedly in interviews that she is "far removed" from the person who committed the crime. But she is the person almost certain to die for it.
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Case Raised Questions About Women and the Death Penalty
Texas Executes Tucker
"Certainly you can’t say that brutally murdering two people is good. It’s not. But afterwards, what came from that in me was good." — Karla Faye Tucker
By Rebecca Leung
ABCNEWS.com
Feb. 3 — Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection tonight, gasping and coughing twice before she was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m.
Before she was executed, she smiled, asked forgiveness from her victim’s husband and thanked her family, saying "I love you all very much."
It took her eight minutes to die.
Gov. George W. Bush refused to grant Tucker a one-time temporary reprieve, something he has also not done for the 59 men executed during his three years in office.
"Like many touched by this case, I have sought guidance through prayer. I have concluded judgment about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority," Bush said.
"The courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have reviewed the legal issues in this case, and therefore I will not grant a 30-day stay."
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 432 people have been executed nationwide—Tucker is the second woman to be put to death since then.
Hundreds gathered outside the prison to protest the execution, carrying signs reading "Execution Is Not the Solution" and "I Oppose the Death Penalty."
Death penalty supporters also showed up, cheering when awaiting word came that the execution would proceed.
"Karla Faye Tucker will die today," said Richard Thornton, the husband of one of the victims. "My family and I are very happy about that incident."
When the news reached the crowd that Tucker had been executed, a cheer rose from death penalty advocates as some sang "Na Na Na Na...Say Goodbye."
Lisa Jackson, who opposes the death penalty and traveled from Michigan, was disheartened by the boisterous reaction.
"I think God is sovereign," she said. "He gives life and he takes life."
The Supreme Court turned down a stay of execution this afternoon, and the Texas parole board also rejected efforts to save Tucker, whose clemency request raised hard questions about the treatment of women and men in the justice system.
Tucker was flown Monday from the female death row at a prison in Gatesville to Huntsville, 80 miles north of Houston, where the state’s executions are carried out.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole was lobbied by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, Amnesty International and even the pope, who wanted to give her a life sentence without parole. The board unanimously rejected 16 similar requests last year.
Texas, which is responsible for about a third of the executions nationwide, put to death a record 37 death row inmates in 1997. But the state hasn’t executed a woman since the Civil War, when Chipita Rodriguez was hanged for killing a horse trader.
In 1983, Tucker and her boyfriend, Daniel Ryan Garrett, plunged a pickax at least 20 times into the bodies of Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton. Tucker was taped saying the killings enthralled her to the point of sexual ecstasy.
Tucker never claimed to be innocent, but said she should be spared the death penalty because she embraced Christianity and was content to spend her life in prison doing God’s work.
"Certainly you can’t say that brutally murdering two people is good. It’s not," said Tucker to ABCNEWS’ Dean Reynolds. "But afterwards, what came from that in me was good."
Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and usually a supporter of the death penalty, said the 38-year-old former teenage prostitute, drug user and rockband groupie should be spared to continue preaching God’s word to others in prison. His television program, The 700 Club, broadcast Tucker’s last prison-cell interview today.
"There should always be a place for mercy," said Tucker in her final interview on The 700 Club. "Life is precious, and if we believe life is precious in abortion, or in mercy killing, shouldn’t we believe life is precious in the death penalty?"
Pope John Paul has appealed for a "humanitarian gesture," as he has at least a half dozen times for other inmates on death row in America. Her cause has also attracted support from around the world, with appeals for clemency from the United Nations and the European Parliament.
A Plea for Mercy
Dismissed as an "aberration of the true female offender" by women’s rights organizations such as the National Center for Women in Prison, Tucker has nevertheless become a potent symbol of how the death penalty is applied across gender lines.
But given the recent history of the Texas parole board, even a single vote from the 18-member panel in favor of clemency for a condemned murderer would be unusual. According to parole board chairman Victor Rodriguez, the board voted 16-0 against commutation in Tucker’s case.
"There is no question as to their vote.…I myself have no quarrel with the decision to deny Karla Faye Tucker’s request on all fronts this morning," Rodriguez told a packed news conference in Texas on Monday.
Gender Brought More Attention
Interviews with Tucker have been broadcast on television nationwide, bringing much attention to her plea for mercy.
"Her gender has made this case more prominent, more closely examined. It has made her more personal, more of a human being to the public," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based advocacy group.
"Thinking of this person as a flesh-and-blood human being, a face, a person, has given us reasons why we should think twice of executing her."
However, some say that if Tucker were a man instead of a woman, she would never get such sympathy.
"For years, women’s groups have been screaming equal rights, so if you do the crime, you deserve equal punishment," said Janice Sager, founder of Texans for Equal Justice, a Houston-based victims support group that held a memorial service outside the prison gates. "She should be accountable. It doesn’t matter if she is a woman. Her victims won’t get a second chance."
Equal Punishment for Equal Crime
Similar claims of conversions by male prisoners, however, have often been disregarded as a right to clemency.
"There have been other men who have also had very sincere religious experiences, and that has not availed them anything when it came time to carry out the sentence," said Lynn Hecht Schafran, a lawyer with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. "You can’t just do it because she is a woman."
But David Dow, professor of law Carolina at the University of Houston, says hat race and gender are important factors in Tucker’s case.
"Of the people who have been executed since 1982, half have found religion, half are either black or Hispanic, and most of them are men. But most of them don’t have the advantage of being physically attractive or articulate as she is, which hurts their case, " said Dow, who has written on Tucker and the death penalty.
"Tucker’s supporters made an exception for her because they saw her as a human being. The question we should be asking ourselves is why so many people saw Tucker’s humanity but refuse to see it in so many others."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Women In Prison