Sunday, April 12, 1998

Life with no parole option desirable

By Steve Ray

It has been two months since Karla Faye Tucker, the ax killer turned born-again Christian, was executed for a murder she committed 14 years before her death.

But the haunting specter of her execution and the debate it caused still linger.

It is in some ways a stunning rebuke to those who said the memory of Tucker's death would fade over time and the debate would die with less publicity for those scheduled for lethal injection.

Earlier this month, a woman death row inmate who dropped all appeals and asked that she be executed changed her mind after pleas from national civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

At the same time, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and a death penalty supporter, became the latest lawmaker poised to file new death penalty reform laws next year.

His decision came Wednesday after a tour with Jackson of the state's death row for women near Gatesville.

"We have to give juries the option of life without the possibility of parole," Ellis said. "If, after they have reviewed all the facts and heard all the testimony, the jury still gives the death penalty, that is their choice. But right now some death sentences are handed down because our juries don't believe a criminal is going to stay behind bars."

Texas is one of only 11 states that doesn't give juries the option of life without parole. Since 1982, when Texas reinstated the death penalty, 147 people have been executed. That's one third of all executions in the United States.

And it's a growing statistic that is causing some people to rethink their belief in the death penalty.

The Scripps Howard Texas Poll showed support for the death penalty dropped after the Tucker execution. Sixty-eight percent of Texans supported the death penalty in February compared with 86 percent who favored it in 1994.

But the poll also showed the option favored by Ellis is unlikely to make a difference to death penalty supporters. Seventy-seven percent of those Texans said it wouldn't change their minds about executions.

The continuing controversy over the Texas death penalty is due as much to other events as to Tucker's death.

The recent killings at a Jonesboro, Ark., school convinced one Waxahachie lawmaker that Texas laws aren't strong enough.

Republican state Rep. Jim Pitts said he will push a change in Texas law that will allow children as young as 11 to be sentenced to death -- even if that means establishing a sort of kiddie death row to keep them separated from adult convicts.

Texas law prohibits the execution of anyone younger than 17.

Both sides of the death penalty debate are planning calls to action when the Legislature meets in January.

Buoyed by support from some conservative religious leaders, death penalty opponents hope to make executions a pro-life issue and argue that anyone's life can be changed.

Others hope to introduce changes to the state's clemency process, raise standards for lawyers representing condemned killers and prohibit executions of the mentally retarded and of juveniles.

Meanwhile, victims rights groups are expected to oppose any ideas that would lessen the impact of the death penalty.

They say the story of two Arlington men who earlier this year admitted to kidnapping and killing a mentally handicapped woman for the thrill of it equals any story of Tucker's alleged conversion and rehabilitation. At least one of the admitted killers has said he should die for the crime.

Texas lawmakers should give juries a chance to disagree. Support is building for the life without the possibility of parole option. But while changes are needed in the death penalty laws, Texans must keep the death penalty as a final punishment for the ultimate crime.

Steve Ray is chief of the Scripps Howard Austin Bureau.