1998: Karla Faye Tucker, for an axe murder and a Republican presidency
February 3rd, 2008 Headsman
Ten years ago today, born-again murderess Karla Faye Tucker died by lethal injection in Texas — her reprieve refused by politically ambitious Governor George W. Bush.
At the bottom, Tucker’s case was a simple one: on a drug-fueled jag at age 23, she’d committed two grisly axe murders in the course of a robbery.* By the time her appeals ran out and her case reached the executive clemency stage, she’d become an outspoken born-again Christian and was asking for mercy.
She was far from the first prisoner to have undergone that conversion.
But she was, to begin with, to be the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War, which by itself gave her case a special valence. That she was white and relatively photogenic surely did not hurt her cause. By hook or by crook, if not by any objectively consistent standard, her situation caught the public eye –attracting support from some ordinarily pro-death penalty evangelicals as well as more predictable allies. She appeared live on Larry King’s talk show three weeks before her execution. For a few weeks, Tucker became the emblematic dilemma of reform and redemption pitting the death penalty’s various partial rationales against one another: between retribution for her crime and the present interest of her society, which has precedence? And who decides?
The decider today** was a first-term governor of Texas due to face re-election nine months hence and already looking ahead to the 2000 presidential election.
The case presented George W. Bush with a delicate political situation. Bush was carving out a public persona as a tough-talking lawman — at this point in time, his willingness to execute might have been the thing he was best-known for nationally. He would need evangelical support to run for president, but parsing out life and death on that basis would raise its own difficulties.
The calculus pointed towards proceeding with the execution under cover of pious flimflammery. Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame later recalled it:
[O]n the night of Karla Faye’s killing, my anger at George W. Bush turned to outrage when Larry King aired Bush’s press statement and I heard the way Bush invoked God to bless his denial of clemency … “May God bless Karla Faye Tucker and may God bless her victims and their families.”
Immediately after the statement, King turned to me for a response … [I] said, “It’s interesting to see that Governor Bush is now invoking God, asking God to bless Karla Faye Tucker, when he certainly didn’t use the power in his own hands to bless her. He just had her killed.”
Bush’s political instincts proved grimly accurate this day, but Karla Faye Tucker very nearly returned to derail his presidential bid a year later.
In an interview the following year with a conservative journalist, Bush mocked Tucker’s plea for mercy with shocking cruelty, subsequently related in Talk magazine:
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for 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.”
The journalistic principle demands acknowledging the president-to-be’s denial of the remark, but the denial is a self-evident lie. That story briefly threatened to punch a hole in Bush’s presidential campaign positioning as a “compassionate conservative,” and especially of having somberly reviewed the myriad death warrants he signed. But the matter vanished harmlessly.
At the end, for the relentless churn of the news cycle, Karla Faye Tucker was a passing shadow. What was left — this day, and a decade after — was an intensely personal story, rich with those timeless and unfathomable mysteries of the human experience cast by the executioner into such sharp relief.
This documentary, sympathetic to Tucker but not only to her, was made around the time of the execution but stands up well for its presentation of the widely divergent, equally heartfelt perspectives of several drawn into the passion — Tucker herself, a victim’s brother who forgave her, and a victim’s spouse who hated her until the end.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The literature left behind by this day’s case likewise tends — when it is not about the President — to the devotional qualities of Karla Faye’s personal path.
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So too the cinematic treatment Forevermore:
A roundup of Karla Faye Tucker coverage is here. A detailed biography is here. A pro-Karla Faye site memorializes her here.
* Along with her boyfriend, who was also sentenced to death but died in prison. Even before she was an “attractive” woman seeking clemency, the case — like that of many death row women — had a sexualized context as well: she boasted of reaching orgasm as she struck the victims, and recordings of those boasts were played at her trial.
** Legally, the Governor of Texas had — and still has — limited powers of clemency: if the parole board did not recommend mercy, Bush could do nothing more than offer a 30-day stay. That statutory limitation was more apparent than real, however: board members are political appointees and their deliberations are secret; they essentially answer to the governor. On the one occasion Bush actually did want to grant clemency, he made his desire known and the board obliged with the needed recommendation.
Also On This Date
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Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Common Criminals, Lethal Injection, Milestones, Murder, Popular Culture, Religious Figures, Ripped from the Headlines, Texas, USA, Women
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10 Comments Add your own
1. Fiz (UK) | February 3rd, 2008 at 7:51 am
Don’t get me wrong, I think what Karla did was awful. I do however feel that the Karla that did the crime was not the same Karla who died. I’ve read “Crossed Over” and she really did seem to change. Her mother had her hooked on drugs by the time she was eight and she had a terrible life. I have a US friend who adamantly refuses to accept that Bush mimicked Karla, and I thought maybe I’d dreamed it. It’s reassuring to find that I didn’t. Karla Faye Tucker who killed was not the same woman they put to death. I spent all day praying that she wouldn’t die, but it wasn’t to be. I wish she had been spared.
2. Iris | December 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am
The victim Debora’s Brother is the greatest testimony that can exist. Karla’s story continues because of the many areas that her life represents ie death penalty. Why is it that our society kills those who would bring Love and the Light of God in to manifestation? I also feel the anguish of the victims and believe the goodness of their lives should be brought more into the “media eye”. However, I am glad that the message of Hope and Inspiration that Karla’s life is will continue to reach many. God DOES change people. God’s message will never be stopped even when Society chooses to act in a murderous way. I am not totally against the Death Penalty but I am against murdering someone who is not a menace to our society in any way and who only asks to continue her ministry in the prison she is in. God bless us All, I pray this Christmas season and always. That, I believe would be the message of Deborah’s Brother, Deborah and Karla.
3. Bob | January 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Bush need to worry about himself after Jan. 20 (that is if he dosen’t pardon himself). He might be looking at a needle for the war criimes & everything else he have done in the last 8 years. (Please President Obama, don’t kill me!)
4. Leigh | February 3rd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
“Bush need to worry about himself after Jan. 20 (that is if he dosen’t pardon himself). He might be looking at a needle for the war criimes & everything else he have done in the last 8 years. (Please President Obama, don’t kill me!)”
Hilarious!
5. Leigh | February 3rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm
“…He might be looking at a needle for the war crimes & everything else he have done in the last 8 years. (Please President Obama, don’t kill me!)”
Very well said.
On Tucker -I’m glad she found the Lord, but her salvation was for her own good. If they pardoned her, there honestly would be alot of other “Come to Jesus” murderers popping up all over the country. She was an example -as tacky as that sounds - and they couldn’t give one newly saved Believer a pardon, and not the others.
As for Bush, he has alot to answer for when he goes before the Throne. It will most likely be “Please God, don’t send me to Hell. Osama’s down there, and he don’t like me since my war on Terra!”
6. Dwayne | March 21st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Why has this become a Bush bashing article. Karla Faye was convicted and sentence to death by a jury of her peers. Bush did not convict her. Many people change in prison some for the better some for the worse, but her sentence was already handed out. Also you guys with the war crap need to learn how government works. Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution says the Congress shall have power “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;” Congress passed on this power to the President and they voted and approved the war. Its not Bush’s war, its our derelict governments war. They were all complicit in it! Obama is no different, he wants to remove troops from Iraq because thats the populists political view but he won’t bring them home, they will instead just head over to Afghanistan. The real enemy is our government officials and our central banking system that makes billions of dollars in profit from any war in the world. Bush and Cheney made profits of course but look at the democrats financial statements and you will see they made profits also. Its like pro wrestling, they are enemies in the ring in the public square but they are all buddies behind the scenes!
7. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | May 12th, 2009 at 1:23 am
[...] tongue no doubt planted firmly in cheek — that Herrera apply for executive clemency, a dead letter procedure in Texas used exclusively in a good cop/bad cop routine opposite the black [...]
8. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 15th, 2009 at 2:47 am
[...] has made the company of many a woman, but our hobby is a noticeably gendered one: whether as common criminals, fallen royals, political prisoners, war criminals, or any other subset of the execution-prone, [...]
9. D. Ward | August 25th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
IT has been years now since Karla was executed, I beleive in the death penalty, but Karla Faye should not have been executed. I also would like to cooment on that fat slob husband of Debra Thornton. If they had such a great marriage, why was she spending the night with another man. I feel he just wanted to get some t.v. time and make some money off of a movie or biook deal. I feel sorry for bthe daughter of Debra Thornton, but Ms. Thorntons husband is a joke,.
I hope Karla is resting in peace, and she knew she was going to a much better place, but she could have done so much good if she had been given clemency. There atre many people who should have been executed years ago, like the night stalker whio is a satanist, and he has no remorse. After 20 years he is still sitting on death row. It seems those who least cdeserve execution afre the last to get it.
Karla did not deserve to die, but I know she is with God. I hope to meet her some day. As for Thornton, I hope he has a long miserable lonely life because he was only out to promote himself. I firmly beleive that. The man Debra Thornton wanted to be with died with her. May God Bless Them Both. What chace did Karla have the way she was raised. Her own mother had her using heroin before she was a teenager and marijuana at aghe 10. She also put her daughter on the street to sell her body to get her mom monet for drugs. I think she did better than most girls who was treated like that would do. She should have been going tio schi=oll and going to Six Flags or Disney World, not selling her body for the women who gave birth to her. I never heard any words of hate from Karla towards the women who gave birth to her,.She was not a mother to her.
10. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | October 31st, 2009 at 12:36 am
[...] women such as Sue Logue, Lois Nadean Smith, Ruth Snyder, Karla Faye Tucker, Hannah Ocuish and Ethel Rosenberg are also among the top 50. It’s still probably the case [...]
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