Thursday, 4-16-98---



TEXAS:

The Lord Saves a Texas Woman From Execution--for Now

Erica Sheppard planned to die on April 20. Then God called, and she changed her mind.

Sheppard was originally scheduled to be executed by lethal injection next week. At 24, she is the youngest of the 7 women on Texas's death
row. Sheppard arrived there after being convicted of murdering a Houston real estate agent in 1993. Last fall, Sheppard, who has 3 children,
abruptly stopped her appeals. If executed, she would have been the 3rd woman put to death this year, and the 2nd female Texan since Karla Faye Tucker.

Over the last few months, Sheppard has received dozens of letters each day. Death penalty opponents around the world urged her to keep
fighting. Her mother, Madelyn McNeil, scribbled, "I do not support you in this decision" at the beginning of every missive. Jesse Jackson
and Bianca Jagger contacted her with the same message. But Sheppard insists the lobbying did not sway her.
She says, "Unless I heard from above, I wasn't moving."
What finally changed her mind, she says, was a "divine encounter" she had with God one day late last month, while she was scrubbing the sink in
her cell. She was speaking aloud to God, she says, when He told her not to give up. So Sheppard called her attorney and said she wanted to file
an appeal. Sheppard will likely remain on death row for several more years while her case winds through the courts.

With her near-execution, Sheppard became the latest of the nation's 48 female death row prisoners to seize the media's attention. Now her mother
prays that Sheppard will continue to build momentum around this issue the way another devout woman recently did. "I hope she will take up where Karla
Faye left off and put another face on the death penalty," McNeil says.

On an April afternoon in the visiting room of the Mountain View Unit prison, Sheppard talked from behind a wall of Plexiglas about her change
of heart. She wore a pair of gold earrings shaped like leaves plus her "prison whites"--the inmate uniform of cotton pants and V-necked shirt.
She also wore a huge, radiant grin. During a 1-hour interview, Sheppard seemed feisty and confident, punctuating her remarks with an infectious laugh.
Sheppard insists that even while her execution date loomed, she remained unruffled. "I've never had a problem with the date," she says.
"I've always been at peace with it. If I'm following God, then I know everything is going to be okay."

Sheppard landed on death row after being convicted of robbing and killing Marilyn Sage Meagher, 43, with the help of a male acquaintance,
who also received a death sentence. According to trial testimony, the pair followed Meagher into her apartment, cut her throat with a
butcher knife, smashed a 10-pound statue over her head, and stole her black Mazda. Sheppard's trial attorney argued that she had merely
provided the knife and that her codefendant actually killed the victim. At the time, Sheppard was 19 years old and had never been convicted of a
crime . It took a jury only an hour and 20 minutes to decide she should get a death sentence.

Sheppard grew up in a modest brick house on a quiet street in south central Houston, where she was raised by her mother and grandmother.
Sheppard's mother carefully points out her daughter's religious roots. "She didn't change to religious when she got to prison," says
McNeil, 44, who works as a counselor for drug-addicted women and their families. "Erica was brought up in the church. She always knew God."
Sheppard has a high school degree; at the time of the murder, she was studying to be a medical assistant.

Recently, 4 of Texas's 7 condemned women sat in their cozy, immaculate living room, watching Oprah and opening stacks of mail. Behind them
stretched a single row of cells. These women inhabit a self-contained world, interacting on a day-to-day basis only with 1 another and the
prison staff. In sharp contrast, the 438 men on Texas's death row live on top of each other in 3-tiered cell blocks and often communicate by
banging on their bars and yelling.

The female death row inmates are allowed out of their cells during the day if they participate in the work program, which produces quilts,
blankets, and stuffed dolls called "Parole Pals." Sheppard joined, but quickly got bored. Now she spends 21 hours a day in her cell,
reading Christian novels and Dean Koontz paperbacks.

"I don't like being around a lot of people," says Sheppard. About the women she lives with, she adds, "I consider them all friends, but you can
be friends with someone and you don't have to be around them 24-7."

The inmate Sheppard grew closest to was Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed February 3 after being on death row for 14 years. Sheppard
jokingly called the 38-year-old inmate "mom" and now keeps a picture of Tucker over her bed. When Tucker left, Sheppard was in Houston awaiting
a court hearing. "I didn't get to come back and see her...and that still bothers me," says Sheppard, brushing away tears. "But I know that she
knew that I loved her." Sheppard pauses. Then she says softly, "I miss her."

Just as they had done with Tucker, prison officials moved Sheppard from death row to a 10-foot-by-17-foot cell in another part of Mountain
View several weeks before her scheduled execution. Sheppard was left alone with her Bible, hot pot, and typewriter. She got up at 6 a.m.,
prayed, wrote letters, and pondered her lethal injection.

Sheppard talked about her upcoming death with her three children, who range in age from 5 to 8 and are being raised by their 88-year-old
great-grandmother. "I tried to explain to them that Mommy might not be around here on earth anymore but it didn't mean that I didn't love them,"
Sheppard says. "They couldn't grasp what I was saying."

When Sheppard finally changed her mind, her family members were not the only ones who were relieved. Her neighbors on death row learned from
a news report on the radio that a judge had granted Sheppard's request to withdraw her execution date. "It surprised all of us because she was so
adamant about going through with it," says Darlie Routier, 28, who was convicted of killing her five-year-old son. "We were all happy for her.
I hope this time she'll stick with the fight and fight it out 'til the end."

So does Sheppard's mother. The 1st thing she did when she heard that her daughter would not be killed on April 20 was go to sleep. The stress
of Sheppard's pending death had given her insomnia. Plus there were all those calls from pesky reporters begging her to let them talk to her
daughter. McNeil got more than 50 requests for interviews--from every major television network, many European journalists, and even Geraldo
Rivera, who made a personal call.

To help change her daughter's mind, McNeil wrote to Jesse Jackson. He agreed to help. McNeil believes this news helped give her daughter the
resolve to keep fighting. Even after Sheppard's lawyer filed a motion to stop her upcoming execution, the civil rights leader went to see her. On
April 8, Jackson and Sheppard talked and prayed together through a wire-laced window for more than an hour.

Sheppard's near-execution appears to have transformed her mother into an activist. Now McNeil is starting a support group for the friends and
family of death row inmates. For her part, Sheppard seems pleased with her decision and her spiritual growth. About what the future holds, she
says, "If I follow God and listen to him, then I know everything's going to be okay."

(source: (New York) Village Voice)