Karla Faye Tucker

File:Karla Tucker.jpg

Karla Faye Tucker (1959-1998).

Karla Faye Tucker Brown (November 18, 1959 – February 3, 1998) Karla Tucker was born and grew up in Houston, Texas. When she was 13, she began traveling with the Allman Brothers Band. In her early 20's she started to hang out with bikers and on June 13, 1983 she entered the home of another biker with Danny Garrett and James Leibrant to steal a motorcycle. During the robbery, two persons were killed and Danny Garrett and Karla Tucker were convicted of their murder.

The trendy lie

During Karla Tucker's trial, tape recorded by Garrett's brother while wearing a wire was played on which she claimed that she had multiple orgasms during the killings. She retorted that this was just a big talk to impress her friends. On this point, Florence King (National Review, March 9,1998) commented that

The murder occurred in 1983 when the multiple-orgasm craze was going full-tilt, when it was impossible to turn on the TV without hearing feminists talking about the female's "superior capacity," or read Cosmopolitan without finding an article on the mighty G-spot. I would bet anything that enough of this pop carnality filtered through to Karla Faye to inspire the trendy lie that sealed her doom.

The prison years

Danny Garrett and Karla Tucker were sentenced to death in 1984, Karla Tucker was at that time 23 years old. In 1993 Danny Garrett died in prison of a liver disease. While on the death row, Karla Tucker become a born-again Christian and married by proxy the prison chaplain Dana Lane Brown whom she was allowed to see during the marriage ceremony only through a Plexiglas barrier. On February 3, 1998, Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m.

Karla Tucker and George W. Bush

Under Texas law, each death penalty case has one chance to be reprieved by a governor without the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The board must recommend the second reprieve in order for it to be granted. All 18 members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles are appointed by the governor (Clark, 2000). Before execution of Karla Tucker, there were the appeals for clemency, from Waly Bacre Ndiaye, the United Nations commissioner on summary and arbitrary executions, the World Council of Churches, the Pope John Paul II, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and other world figures. The unusual appeals came from conservative American political figures such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson, interceding on her behalf. Karla Tucker did not ask pardon, only commutation of her death sentence to a life in prison that she can atone for her crime by working in the prison's hospital. Warden of the Huntsville prison Baggett testified that she was a model prisoner and that after 14 years on the death row, she likely have been reformed. Despite of these pleas, then-Governor George W. Bush signed her death warrant. In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, Carlson interviewed George W. Bush for Talk Magazine. Carlson wrote:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Fay Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, "What would you say to Governor Bush?" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." I must look shocked--ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel--because he immediately stops smirking.

Bush denied that he had intended to make light of the issue.

International reactions

Karla Tucker gained international attention both for being the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War and the first in the United States since 1984. Abroad, her execution was viewed mostly as a further evidence of the widely shared belief of Americans' reckless disregard for human life. Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro echoed this opinion by noting in a public speech that spectators outside a Texas prison had cheered when Karla Faye Tucker was executed. "And we are on the threshold of 2,000 years of Christ!" he exclaimed. In England, Richard Harries of the Diocese of Oxford reported that a Gospel singer's Amazing Grace was shouted down by cries Kill the bitch! and Use a pick-ax! from the crowd that gathered outside of prison. From Nicaragua, Bianca Jagger campaigned on Karla Faye Tucker's and Sean Sellers' behalf, using their example (Sean Sellers was executed the same year as Karla Tucker for a crime committed at age 16) to point out the anomaly of the U.S. Justice system as compared to other post-industrial countries that abolished the death penalty and executions of prisoners for crimes committed while they have been children.

Sound tracks

• Mezera, A.A. (2005). Karla Faye. On the Texas CD, released by Didgeridoo Records, Australia.
• Wishbbones (2001). Karla Faye A song On David Knopfler's album about Karla Fay Tucker. [Paris Records/Edel GmbH/Koch Entertainment]

Theatrical plays

• MacNeil, R. (2005) Karla. Produced by Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford, CT.

References

• Clark, T. (2000). Texas procedures on death penalty reprieves. CNN Law Center. June 22, 2000.
• King, L. (1998). Karla Faye Tucker: Live from Death Row. CNN Transcript # 98011400V22.
• Strom, L. (2000). Karla Faye Tucker set free: life and faith on death row. New York, NY. Random House: Shaw Books.

External links

• Crime Library - Karla Faye Tucker: Texas' Controversial Murderess
• "Death in Texas" by Sister Helen Prejean
• Commentary by Florence King