Karla Tucker's legacy
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
own progeny, but there was also a great deal of altruism involved. I try to explain to young people that before the world changed, the main channel for youthful desires ~o serve others was...
...In 1966, opposition to the death penalty hit its peak...
...It was like a commune, only you produced all the members...
...It would give Puerto Rico's 3.5 million residents the chance to decide whether their homeland will become a state, an independent country, or retain its current status...
...These business leaders have the means to wage a strong media campaign to maintain the status quo...
...But unless residents emigrate to the mainland United States--which, as U.S...
...It's not iust increased selfishness...
...Carlson reminded us that those who oppose the death penalty are not indifferent to justice or soft on crime or uncaring about victims...
...And I'd never heard of Saint Teresa setting out at age ten to convert the Moors...
...Ron Carlson, the brother of one of Tucker's victims, voiced the core argument against capital punishment...
...The best case for the death penalty is that it is the only just sentence for a human being who takes the life of another...
...The Tucker execution, I suspect, will be a turning point in our country's long and difficult debate over whether capital punishment is right...
...Not for independence...
...Ironically, our generation was the exception, providing an unusual bulge in the demographic curve...
...She forced them to look afresh at what they really think of the death penalty...
...Statehood advocates argue that if Puerto Rico becomes part of the Union, it will be the twenty-sixth largest state, and that an economic and political bonanza will follow...
...Mercy," declared Roberton, "trumps justice...
...The reason I think that Karla should live is that I don't think that we, as human beings, have the right to take a life, whether it is for justice or whether it is in vengeance or revenge," he said...
...Puerto Ricans, like many other Hispanics, are basically conservaCommonweal | Q February 27, 1998...
...I am opposed to capital punishment but know that I would want the person who killed a loved one to die...
...The popular sense, not at all foolish, was that the criminal justice system was failing, neither punishing enough criminals nor delivering much justice...
...Many of them came to believe that she, a bornagain Christian who appeared truly to have repenI-ed of her double murder with a pickax, deserved clemency...
...Like one of the states, it has no power to legislate foreign policy, defense matters, or international trade issues...
...Congress this session and has ostensible support from both the Republican and Democratic leadership, and from the president...
...It must be human nature because I can remember as a child forcing my poor sister to go without covers in winter so we could shiver and pretend to be Eskimos struggling to survive in the freezing Arctic...
...Real per capita income ($6,360 in 1992) is three to four times that of Caribbean neighbors like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and incalculably more than that of Cuba or Haiti...
...The bill is timed to coincide with this year's one-hundredth anniversary of the island's annexation by the United States...
...I can only conclude that family size among Americans, Catholics inclu d ed, will remain small in the foreseeable future...
...citizens, they can do without obstruction--Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president or Congress, and their only representation in Washington is a single, nonvoting but popularly elected member called a resident commissioner...
...But that is not true...
...But Tucker reminded us of all the irrationalities of the death penalty--how it is unevenly applied, how it answers one form of brutality with another and becomes a spectacle...
...we were free to be extravagantly fruitful in a time when life was grace and favor, and good and plenty...
...E _9 1998, Washington Post Writers Group Joseph D. Policano P•KRT@ RIC@ Will it be the fifty-first state...
...According to the Gallup Poll, 47 percent of Americans opposed the death penalty then and only 42 favored it...
...But with crime rates abating and with tough laws on the books to jail the guilty, it may he possible for us to re-examine whether our support for the death penalty is genuinely rooted in a concern for justice or whether it in fact violates our sense of both fairness and mercy...
...Support for the death penalty began rising in the face of the violent crime wave that started in the mid-'60s...
...After committing a brutal act, she repented and softened the hearts of tens of millions of Americans...
...Today the church teaches a more demanding version of Christian parenthood in which parents nmst take responsibility for providing high levels of education and formation...
...Though the independence movement gets a fair amount of press, independistas gained barely 5 percent of the vote in the last two referenda, and would fare even worse next time out...
...Karla Faye Tucker, despite her vicious crime, may help us to do that...
...oters in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have V twice refused to become what many of the island's Caribbean neighbors and most of the underdeveloped world can only dream of becoming: the fifty-first state of the Union...
...Statehood might mean two more Democratic senators and six additional Democrats in the House...
...Therefore, I believe that only God should take the life...
...Now in a more pessimistic time I can cast a colder eye and see that enthusiastic parental risk-taking can be irresponsible...
...They know that to be truly "fair," the death penalty would have to involve the execution of thousand s every year...
...and, most basically, whether we're comfortable in our souls with the collective responsibility we assume when the state puts someone to death...
...Islanders have a deep pride in their distinct heritage...
...At other times in our history, most recently three decades ago, we looked far more skeptically upon this ultimate punishment...
...A big family was like the Peace Corps, only at home...
...Still, Puerto Rico trails all fifty states in economic development...
...They simply believe that the taking of the life of a guilty person does not make up for the taking of innocent life...
...It is presumed that because support for the death penalty is now so overwhehning in the United States, it has always been thus...
...Behind the scenes, some members of the Republican leadership are reported to be gagging on the idea...
...Working parents suffer incredible stresses and conflicts...
...Still, if the past holds true, should Puerto Ricans step into the voting booth, powerful and unpredictable emotions can take over...
...We, human beings, did not create life...
...They shrink from that prospect...
...Advocating the death penalty was a loud and forceful way of saying: Enough...
...Officially a commonwealth but actually a colony, Puerto Rico presently chooses its local officials and decides its own budget and taxes...
...That is because, thanks to post-World War II American aid and tax incentives, Puerto Rico is now the richest land in the Caribbean and one of the most welloff in all of Latin America...
...The Reverend s Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell rose to her defense and the language they used echoed arguments long made, ineffectually, by opponents of the Commonweal 9 February 27, 1998 death penalty...
...A bill authorizing a third plebiscite is to be presented before the U.S...
...Don't most young peopIe want to live fully, passionately, and throw themselves into daring projects...
...efore Karla Faye Tucker's execution fades from our memories, it's worth pondering the legacy she lef~ behind...
...Furthermore, in past referenda the island's business community has been lukewarm toward statehood, fearful of being placed under Washington's IRS regulations rather than the island's more familiar Treasury Department procedures...
...The operative spirituality of our day was much taken with Franciscan and Catholic Worker espousals of poverty and providence--which works out better for celibates...
...Foes of capital punishment often find themselves defending people who not only did awful things, but seem to have no remorse for having done them...
...Two children seem harder to raise than six used to be...
...The San Juan Star reported that the commonwealth received $10 billion from Washington in 1996, more than sixteen states, but that, based on population, island residents were still shortchanged in comparison...
...I try to explain to young people that before the world changed, the main channel for youthful desires ~o serve others was domestic...
...If there is a third referendum, which way is it likely to go...
...We worried then about many of the things that Karla Faye Tucker forced us to think about now': whether executing someone is the best way to declare our mutual conunihnent to the principle that taking another's life is wrong...
...Ah well, another blessing to be grateful for...
...whether people who do truly terrible things are, from that moment on, pariahs who have no contributions to make to the rest of us...
...It would not seem fair that such a person would long outlive his or her victim...
...The Reverends Robertson and Falwell bore witness to our doubts...
...And increasingly, families are hardpressed for time, energy, money, and communal support...
...And in my case, I must admit that as a lazy feminine bookworm with little money, having many children was like an Outward Bound Survival challenge...
...They are hard-pressed to answer the families of murder victims shouting for just vengeance...
...Psychological and economic standards of childrearing have risen in the last forty years...
...Doubts about the death penalty led to a decline in executions--in 1966, there was but one and in 1967 just two...
...The power of the Tucker case came from the challenge her execution posed to Christian conservatives who support the death penalty in principle...
...But young Catholics aren't any longer imbued with the fervent belief that God will provide and come to one's succor...
...God creates this life...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 4
