Karla Faye Tucker

Karla Faye Tucker
Born	November 18, 1959 Houston, Texas, U.S.
Died	February 3, 1998 (aged 38) Huntsville, Texas, U.S.
Charge(s)	Murder
Penalty	Death sentence
Status	Executed
Spouse	Dana Lane Brown

Karla Faye Tucker (November 18, 1959 – February 3, 1998) was convicted of murder in Texas in 1984 and put to death in 1998. She was the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984, and the first in Texas since 1863. Because of her gender and widely-publicized conversion to Christianity, she inspired an unusually large national and international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, a movement which included a few foreign government officials.

Early life

Karla Tucker was born and raised in Houston, Texas, the youngest of three sisters. Her father Larry was a longshoreman on the Gulf of Mexico. The marriage was very troubled, and Tucker started smoking with her sisters when she was eight years old. At the age of ten, her parents divorced, and during the divorce proceedings, she learned that she had been the result of an extramarital affair. By age 12, she had turned to drugs and sex. When she was 14, she dropped out of school and followed her mother Carolyn, a rock groupie, into prostitution and began traveling with the Allman Brothers Band, The Marshall Tucker Band, and the Eagles. At age 16, she briefly married a mechanic named Stephen Griffith. In her early 20s, she began hanging out with bikers, and met a woman named Shawn Dean and her husband Jerry Lynn Dean, who introduced her to a man named Danny Garrett in 1981.^[1][2]

The murder

On June 11, 1983, Tucker, her friends, and her sisters got high on drugs and alcohol at a party, where she heard that Shawn Dean had broken up with her husband Jerry a week earlier. Two days later, having spent the day doing drugs with Garrett, she entered Jerry Dean's home at 2:00 am with Garrett and James Leibrant to steal Dean's motorcycle. During the burglary, Jerry Dean heard the commotion and confronted the burglars, which prompted Garrett to strike him numerous times with a hammer. Dean's girlfriend, Deborah Thornton, entered the bedroom to find Garrett striking Dean on the head. She hid under the bedcovers, where Tucker discovered her. Tucker then hacked Thornton to death with multiple pickaxe blows, after which Garrett embedded the axe in Deborah's heart. The next morning, a landlord discovered the victims' bodies. Investigation led to the arrests of Tucker and Garrett.^[3]

Trial and conviction

In September 1983, Tucker and Garrett were indicted and tried separately for the murders. Tucker entered a plea of not guilty and was jailed awaiting trial. She took a Bible from the prison ministry program and read it in her cell. She later recalled, "I didn't know what I was reading and before I knew it, I was just — I was in the middle of my floor on my knees and I was just asking God to forgive me."^[4] She later claimed that her new faith gave her the strength to endure her trial and sentencing.^[5]

In the spring of 1984, she confessed to the murders and implicated Garrett. During Tucker's trial, a tape recorded by Garrett's brother while wearing a wire was played on which she claimed that she had multiple orgasms during the killings. Tucker replied that she had made up this detail to impress her friends. Garrett and Tucker were convicted on April 19, 1984.^[6]

Though the death penalty was hardly ever sought for female defendants, Garrett and Tucker were both sentenced to death in late 1984. (Garrett died in prison of liver disease in 1993.) She shared her Death Row cell at the Gatesville Unit with her friend Pam Perillo, whose own sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. Tucker became a Christian in 1985.

Between 1984 and 1992, requests for a retrial and appeals were denied, but on June 22, 1992, eight days before she was scheduled to be executed, she was granted a stay of execution. In 1995, she married by proxy the volunteer prison chaplain, Dana Lane Brown, whom she had never touched and who she was only allowed to see through an acrylic glass barrier. She was visited by many celebrities who believed her conversion to be genuine, including Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking.

Attempts at clemency

Tucker's last hope of avoiding the death penalty was to apply to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole for the commutation of the sentence. Under Texas law, the granting of commutation of a death sentence is a two stage process. It requires that both a majority of the board and the governor of the state approve. First the board considers the appeal. If a majority of the board accept the plea, the appeal proceeds to the governor, who is not bound by the board's recommendation.^[7]

Tucker requested that her life be spared on the basis that she was under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder and was now a reformed person. Her plea drew support from abroad and also from some leaders of American conservatism. Among those who appealed to the State of Texas on her behalf were Waly Bacre Ndiaye, the United Nations commissioner on summary and arbitrary executions; the World Council of Churches; Pope John Paul II; Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi; the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich; televangelist Pat Robertson; and Ron Carlson, the brother of Tucker's murder victim Debbie Thornton. The warden of Texas' Huntsville prison testified that she was a model prisoner and that, after 14 years on death row, she likely had been reformed.^{[citation needed]} The board turned her down on January 28, 1998.

In the year following her execution, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson questioned Governor George W. Bush about how the Board of Pardons and Parole had arrived at the determination on her clemency plea. Carlson alleged that Bush, alluding to a televised interview which Karla Faye Tucker had given to talk show host Larry King, smirked and spoke mockingly about her.^[8]

Execution

On February 2, 1998, state authorities took Tucker from the unit in Gatesville and flew her to the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, where she was executed by lethal injection the next day, and pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m.^[9] She selected five people to watch her die, including Thornton's husband Richard and his two stepchildren, who supported the death penalty, and Thornton's brother Ronald Carlson, who opposed the execution and had been converted by her faith after visiting Tucker on death row. Her last words were:

She is buried at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston.

International reactions

Tucker gained international attention because she would be the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War and the first in the United States since 1984. Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro noted in a public speech that capital punishment supporters outside a Texas prison had cheered when 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 rendition of "Amazing Grace" was shouted down by cries of "Kill the bitch!" from the pro-death penalty crowd that gathered outside of the prison.

Depictions

Music

• The Tomorrowpeople (1999). "America's Deathrow Sweetheart" (Gibson/Powerchurch) on the album Marijuana Beach [Olivia Records]
• Indigo Girls (1999). "Faye Tucker" (Ray) on the album Come on Now Social [Epic Records]
• Mary Gauthier (2001). "Karla Faye" (Mary Gauthier/Crit Harmon) on the album Drag Queens & Limousines [Munich Records BV]
• David Knopfler (2002). "Karla Faye" (David Knopfler) on the album Wishbones [Paris Records/Edel GmbH/Koch Entertainment]

Theatrical plays, films, and television

• MacNeil, R. (2005) Karla. Produced by Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford, CT.
• KARLA (2005) by Steve Earle opened October 23, 2005 at 45 Below Theatre in NYC.
• Crossed Over (2002), Film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Diane Keaton.
• Karla Faye Tucker: Forevermore (2004), Film directed by Helen Gibson.
• A Question of Mercy: The Karla Faye Tucker Story (1998), TV Documentary directed by Rob Feldman.
• Dead Woman Walking: The Karla Faye Tucker Story (1999), American Justice TV Episode Bill Kurtis/Towers Productions

References

Bibliography

• Carlson, T. (1999). Devil May Care, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106.
• 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
• Karla Faye Tucker at Find A Grave
• Deborah Ruth Thornton by victim Debbie Thornton's husband Richard A Thornton
• Bill Kurtis' "American Justice" Television Documentary
• Time to end the death penalty's cycle of violence by victim Debbie Thornton's brother Ronald Carlson, published in the Star-Telegram newspaper (August 3, 2008). Retrieved on August 26, 2008.
• Lessons Learned from a Death Row Inmate Powerful article on the life and death of Karla Faye Tucker