Volume 3, Number 2
February, 1998
by Dave Lind
In 1983, Karla Faye Tucker and a companion, Daniel Garrett, broke
into the home of Tucker's ex-boyfriend, Jerry Lynn Dean, hoping to
steal motorcycle parts. By the end of the evening both Dean and his
companion, Deborah Thornton, would be bludgeoned to death by a
pickax wielded by Tucker.
On February 3rd of this year Karla Faye Tucker is scheduled to die
in a Texas prison by lethal injection. One would hardly expect
otherwise in a state which leads the country in executions by a
wide margin. What is surprising though, is that in a state where
75 percent of voters approve of the death penalty, the public
sentiment seems to run in favor of sparing Karla Faye Tucker.
Why such sympathy, you ask? Is Tucker's guilt in question? Were
there glaring flaws in the trial? Is she a minor, or perhaps mentally
incompetent? Is it because she is a woman?
No, no, no, no, and partly. The real reason Tucker is receiving so
much sympathy is as simple as it is outrageous.
She found God.
To a person, every individual involved in the debate agrees that
punishment for equal crimes should be meted out equally regardless
of gender, and no one disputes Tucker's guilt or the capital nature
of her crimes. What has persuaded many people to take her side is
the apparent transformation of her character during her 14 years on
death row.
According to those close to the case, Tucker's transformation is as
genuine as it is dramatic and it has drawn surprising support from
conservative circles. Many from the religious right are arguing that,
since she has been saved and is now a good Christian, she should be
spared and allowed to live out the rest of her days in prison. They
contend that the Karla Faye Tucker that we would be executing is not
the same as the Karla Faye Tucker that committed the killings.
To this argument I can only say two words: DNA tests.
To suggest that Tucker is deserving of mercy because she has "gotten
her life together" is patently absurd. The people she brutally
murdered in 1983 are just as dead whether she sings to Jesus or
chants to Lucifer. Her guilt is not diminished by her
"transformation", so neither should be her punishment.
This much is scarcely even worthy of debate.
What is most troubling about all of this, however, and what seems to
have been missed, is the implication by the religious right that by
accepting Jesus and becoming "one of them", Karla Faye Tucker
has somehow attained a heightened status and is thus worthy of
heightened consideration.
Did you follow that? By going to bat for Karla Faye Tucker, the
religious right is saying that all you have to do to receive leniency
in our courts, in their view, is to renounce your wicked ways and
accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Am I the only one who
is frightened by this?
Ask yourself this: What if Karla Faye Tucker had found Allah instead
of Jesus? Or Buddha? Or what if she had simply decided to be a good
and caring person who didn't believe in a divine being? Would she
then, in the eyes of the Christian community, be deserving of mercy?
And if being a Christian warrants leniency in capital crimes, what
about lesser offenses? Do we start giving car thieves and drug
dealers the choice of jail or baptism? Or traffic offenders the
choice of traffic school or bible school? Am I being ridiculous?
Listen to Pat Robertson and Oliver North wax misty-eyed about the
salvation of poor Karla Tucker before you answer that question.