'Dead Man Walking' nun begs mercy for woman on death row

Sister Helen Prejean has little hope that Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas death row inmate scheduled for execution today, will be spared. But, as she tells our correspondent, she hopes that her death will do some good by forcing Americans to think more deeply about the death penalty.

Sitting at her desk in her tiny New Orleans home, Sister Helen Prejean fingers a photograph that she fully expects to bring her deep sadness, and not a little anger, in the hours ahead. The picture is of her with the face of an attractive young woman resting on her shoulder smiling at the camera.

The other woman is Karla Faye Tucker, the murder convict who at 6pm, local time, is almost certain to be dispatched to her death by the state of Texas as punishment for a heinous double murder that she and a former boyfriend committed in Houston in 1983.

Tucker, 38, has never tried to deny the crime, which was committed with a hammer and a pickaxe. She has, however, been asking for clemency, a request that was yesterday rejected by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles - leaving her with just one last chance, the appeal that she has before the United States Supreme Court.

The two women met at Gatesville prison, which houses Texas's death row inmates, two months ago. Last week, while on a speaking visit to Alaska, Sister Helen sent what she knew would be her last words to her in a postcard, with husky dogs pulling a sled on the front.

Sister Helen's message to Tucker was brief. "I just thanked her, thanked her for her life and thanked her for who she was."

These were more than words of spiritual comfort; the gratitude was genuine. Sister Helen, who in 14 years has become the US's best-known voice against capital punishment, believes that the case of Karla Faye Tucker, more than any other since the US Supreme Court reinstituted the death chamber in 1977, will force people to think more seriously about state-sponsored killing.

Sister Helen has done more than anyone to get that process of reflection started. She is the nun who wrote the book Dead Man Walking, which three years ago was made into a hit film of the same name starring Susan Sarandon, as Sister Helen, and Sean Penn as a convict who is sent to the death chamber.

"What makes the death penalty possible is the non- identification of people; the abstraction, the removing of them. We don't see their faces. We dehumanise them like in any military operation."

But with Tucker, we know her story, because she has told it to countless interviewers, on CNN's Larry King and on the 60 Minutes programme. It is the story of a woman who admits to what she did but who has found God and now gives Christian counselling to others.

It has been a redemption that has convinced not just Sister Helen but even the conservative tele-evangelist Pat Robertson, who is a supporter of the death penalty.

"Karla has been in front of the whole nation," the sister explains, "and you're looking into the face of someone who is beautiful, reflective, obviously loving and so she poses the moral question for us in a way that we have never had before. Yes, she's guilty, but will we only define her, will we freeze-frame her, in this worst act of her life."

Therein lies a truth about the death penalty that the sister hopes Americans will begin to ponder.

"What they are saying is we don't care what you say, we're freeze-framing you in this act of murder. And then we freeze-frame ourselves as a society. And that's really an act of despair," Sister Helen said.

"Karla Faye exemplifies this important thing: human beings are more than the worst thing we do in our lives. She exemplifies that in such a dramatic way. It's the transcendence in a person."

That Tucker would be sent to die by the Governor of Texas - and presidential aspirant - George Bush has never been in doubt in the sister's mind. Because to spare her would be to expose that absurdity at the heart of the death penalty process: that redemption simply does not matter.

"If they acknowledge 'guilty but redeemed' as a new category, well then, the whole thing would come apart, because the whole thing is predicated on this: that that act of your life is what we are going to punish you for, never mind what else has happened in your life."

But Sister Helen has confidence at least that Tucker is facing death at ease with herself.

"She has a great freedom in her soul and if they kill her, she is going to be the freest one in that room. She trusts that God has forgiven her and will be waiting for. She will die a free woman, I have no doubt about that," she said.

Tucker, indeed, has told Sister Helen that she is not afraid to die. She is frightened about losing her dignity, though, because she has a bladder control problem that may defeat her towards the end this evening. "I guess she is not scared to die, but she doesn't want to wet her pants in the process," the sister said.