The execution of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas will stain the credibility of the United States in any forum in which it tried to argue about human rights. Tucker, a convicted axe murderer became the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War, after being put to death by lethal injection.
Elements of the execution were sickening, and reflect poorly on both Texas and the United States. Tucker has been in jail for 14 years awaiting execution. It took her several minutes to die. The execution was done by lethal injection which requires an element of medical pre-meditation that defies ethics of anyone associated with medicine or science. The execution was witnessed by members of the victims’ families. Other family members of victims had forgiven her. A grotesque pantomime of supporters of the death penalty were allowed to congregate and cheer outside the jail. In the 14 years she was in jailed she became a changed woman, no longer a drug-addict prostitute. She had repented, pleaded for and expressed genuine remorse.
That she was a woman should not have been an issue. An axe murderer is an axe murderer, male or female.
That she “”found God” was not as significant as the general change in her character. Indeed, the support given to her by two leading right-wing television evangelists, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, was an exercise in hypocrisy because they are otherwise death penalty supporters. Mercy is only available for followers of their brand for religion, apparently.
More sincere appeals for clemency were made by the Pope, Amnesty International and the European Parliament.
The failure of Texas Governor George W Bush (son of the former President) to commute the sentence was shameful. Mr Bush has put politics before compassion or mercy. He wants to appear tough on crime so he routinely rejects appeals for clemency. Last year 37 men were executed in Texas. Tucker was the 145 Texas inmate put to death since capital punishment resumed in 1982.
The only good to come from this execution is that it will put national and world attention on the death penalty.
As Amnesty International spokeswoman Bianca Jagger said outside the Huntsville prison less than an hour before the execution, “”I hope she will be an example that will make America think about the death penalty and how it has been devoid of mercy, and how the only thing valid when we play the death penalty is politics and vengeance.”
In 1976 the US Supreme Court permitted the death penalty to be resumed after earlier ruling most state capital-punishment laws unconstitutional because they offended the provision prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Since then hundreds of criminals have been executed. The death penalty has been applied disproportionately to blacks. Aside from that, it has not acted as a deterrent. The US has a much higher murder rate than any European country, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Much of that can be put down to their appalling gun laws, but perhaps the rampant use of the death penalty creates a climate that more readily accepts the taking of human life.
Deterrence is perhaps the only legitimate public-interest reason for capital punishment. But it does not work. At present 38 states have capital punishment. There is no significant difference in murder rates between them and the states that do not have capital punishment. Once it is shown that capital punishment is not a deterrence, the other reasons for it are base: vengeance and retribution or, worse, saving money on the upkeep of prisoners.
Capital punishment is a stain on one of the world’s great democracies and defenders of human rights. Americans should be ashamed of it and work to end it.