Texas Schedules execution of woman

For the first time since 1863

Source: Dallas Morning News Editorial, Sunday 12.21.97

Karla Faye Tucker has more friends than you’d expect for a pickax murderer. She married a minister while on death row. Conservative TV evangelist Pat Robertson wants her sentence commuted.

Even the brother of one of her murder victims has said Ms. Tucker has reformed and should not be killed.

She will probably die anyway. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles hasn’t commuted a death sentence in many years. If Ms. Tucker is executed next year, she will be the 1^st woman put to death in Texas since 1863. Her attractive personality, combined with the novelty of the event, has focused more attention on Texas’ death penalty than any of the state’ 37 executions this year.

Her death could force Texans to grapple with an issue ignored in recent times: should the justice system be merciful to condemned prisoners who have been rehabilitated?

Ms. Tucker says she has changed. She kicked the drug habit that fueled her violence and underwent a religious conversion in prison. Her guards confirm her rehabilitation.

Should the system respond to her reform? Could anyone prove a rehabilitation as sincere? These questions should trouble supporters of the death penalty.

Yet there are times when the death penalty seems senseless. What if a condemned prisoner is terminally ill and will soon die anyway? What about a mentally retarded inmate? The criminal justice system has an imperfect ability to identify and respond to mental illness and mental retardation.

What if a convict is truly rehabilitated, and the victim’ s families feel no need to pursue the death-sentence? Death row is crowded. This is the time to decide whether an occasional act of mercy would make our criminal justice system more or less just.

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