Miss Tucker's plea

National Review, March 9, 1998 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 3

On the matter of the late Karla Faye Tucker, a few observations:

1. Introducing the matter of her sex was convenient for those who are as much opposed to capital punishment when inflicted on a man but could, in the case of Miss Tucker, profit from the ancient, not to say hoary, appeal to chivalry. Texas' not having executed a woman since the Civil War, even though about 10 per cent of homicides are committed by women, tells the story of a quite understandable reluctance to execute women. But the revival of the idea of special protection contends against the tidal wave of equality. At its most graphic, a woman can in modern times command a fighter plane and shoot down civilians on a roadway, but if she pickaxes to death her mother-in-law, she is supposed to be immune because of the feminine immunity. Bonnie No, Clyde Si.

Those who resist the total modernization of women and who persist in arguing that women soldiers should not be given front-line duty are better off arguing for state laws that automatically commute death sentences for women to life in jail. There are 47 women on death row. It is terribly taxing to anticipate that in behalf of one after another we'll hear pleas based, in fact, on their sex. If the laws want to incorporate special protection for women, let them do so.

2. Amnesty International has been everywhere on the matter of Miss Tucker. I have high esteem for Amnesty International, on whose board I briefly served. Briefly because the organization, led by its London component, came out against capital punishment in 1978. I made the point that an organization designed to help prisoners of conscience has no business getting into the arguments over capital punishment. It is one thing to encourage popular support for men and women persecuted because of their beliefs, quite another to get into the question whether the State of Texas should execute a convict who has taken other lives. Moreover it damages the credibility of Amnesty International. Seventy per cent of the American people favor capital punishment, and some have trouble, when solicited by Amnesty, in extending support. Is this contribution to be used to generate sympathy for a democrat in jail in Havana, or is it going to be used to promote opposition to the execution of Karla Faye Tucker?

3. The heaviest oar in the proceedings was pulled by the Vatican. The Pope sent a message asking President Clinton to intercede for mercy. The Pope's intervention was not discriminatory in nature; Pat Robertson also interceded, but did so on the special grounds that Miss Tucker became a Christian convert and, for most of her 16 years in jail, lived by her faith, did so convincingly, and said that if she were to die, she would accept the decision as the will of God. It is certainly wrong to be skeptical about the sincerity of religious conversions by murderers. The mythogenic trial of Leopold and Loeb in 1924 ended up testing this skepticism. Both young men were sentenced to life plus life, the court guaranteeing that if they were spared the death penalty, Illinois would keep them forever in jail. Loeb died in jail at thirty. Leopold finally prevailed, promising, if released, that he would spend his life in missionary work in Puerto Rico. It was relevant to base commutation on his conversion from undergraduate murderer to senior-citizen missionary in the field. Nobody was proposing that Miss Tucker be sent out as an evangelist.

Meanwhile, the Pope's intervention was categorical. Whatever the specific language, the Pope simply opposes capital punishment, as did his two predecessors.

It is widely supposed that American Catholics are bound by papal judgments in the matter. They are not. A faithful Catholic is bound to ponder the advice of a Pope but to obey his own conscience. Obedience to the Pope is only for those of his commands that come down with doctrinal imprimatur, and how to deal with a woman who axed bloodily to death two innocent people is not of that character.

The support for capital punishment is given by a society in which murder is rampant. The eternal argument is over the question: Does capital punishment deter? Answer: If it is conceivable that it does deter, then by executing such as Karla Faye Tucker, the law may be protecting the life of an innocent person whose murder was contemplated but not effected -- by someone taking in the proceedings in the Tucker case. A final argument (my own, and others') is that capital punishment is the redemption of a contract society owes to all human beings: to protect them and to guard posthumously their dignity, by taking the life of those who took their lives.

(Universal Press Syndicate)