Levity Lightens the Scales of Justice in Weighty Decision

The jurors have listened to Motown music during breaks in testimony. They’ve kibitzed with the bailiff while waiting for court to convene. They’ve chuckled at asides made by the judge and attorneys during open court.

All this while the man whose life they hold in their hands sits no more than 20 feet away. One can only guess he’s thinking, “I’m glad someone’s having a good time.”

There I go, doing the same thing as the jurors: making light in the face of some very serious business.

This is what it can come to along the road to capital punishment in America. Verging on theater of the absurd.

I’m not suggesting for a second that the jurors in Orange County Superior Courtroom 36, who will soon decide whether Edward Charles III lives or dies, are taking their task lightly. Their decorum during testimony has been serious and unanimated. Still, seeing any levity at all in a capital punishment case seems an odd disconnection from the matter at hand.

What probably explains the jurors’ conviviality at times is that their charge--to recommend that Charles spend life in prison or be executed--is so stressful that they need to unwind, even in court and with Charles listening in.

Judge William R. Froeberg hinted at that Thursday afternoon, before sending the jurors home for a long weekend. He mentioned the “pressure and stress” that the case has imposed on them and told them there would be more to come. The defense will begin presenting witnesses next week.

Charles’ fate is being decided--for the third time--while millions of other Americans are debating whether Karla Faye Tucker should be executed in Texas in less than three weeks. She has been the subject of national stories and appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Wednesday night, contending that her religious conversion makes her a good candidate to be spared.

Tucker, who, along with a male friend, killed two people with a pickax 14 years ago, today comes across as photogenic, nonthreatening and potentially useful to other inmates as a Christian counselor. Televangelist Pat Robertson, among others, has called for the commutation of her death sentence.

Charles, now 25, appears equally photogenic and nonthreatening, sitting in court and looking for all the world like a young man with, as they say, his whole life ahead of him. Beneath the veneer of normality, though, lie the facts: In November 1994 he bludgeoned and stabbed his family--father, mother and brother--and then stuffed them in a car and set the car afire. He later asked his grandfather to take the blame.

On the brutality scale, Edward Charles and Karla Tucker would seem about even. Yet even some previous death-penalty advocates like Robertson see no point to executing the now-redeemed Tucker. In the Charles case, some members of the extended family of the victims--in other words, the people closest to the tragedy of the affair--will ask jurors to spare Charles’ life.

The cases only reinforce what we already know, that imposing the death penalty can involve all kinds of questions that challenge logic and fairness.

The state of Texas, for example, isn’t killing Karla Tucker because she’s a continuing threat. It’s killing her because of her deeds of 14 years ago. That may be a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but the state also would have to concede that it is killing someone who could benefit other people.

The prosecutors of Orange County can’t argue that the county wants to kill Edward Charles to assuage the feelings of aggrieved relatives. Those relatives, who hurt more than the prosecutors do about this case, have said they want Charles to live.

The first jury, the one that convicted Charles, deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of execution. The lone juror refused to budge in her insistence on life imprisonment, saying she reserved the death penalty for “innately evil people.”

The second jury returned a death penalty verdict, but it was overturned when a juror conceded that he had sought help from a church friend over biblical teachings on capital punishment.

If nothing else, the cases demonstrate how imprecise the capital punishment business is. Prosecutors have standards for determining who qualifies, but never forget that these are standards of men and not a higher power. Prosecutors believed O.J. Simpson killed his wife with premeditation and in gruesome fashion, not to mention the equally grisly if unplanned murder of Ronald Goldman, but wouldn’t ask for the death penalty because they feared it might put off a jury.

The public supports the death penalty but wavers as much as prosecutors. In one case, our rationale is to provide solace to the victim’s family. If that doesn’t apply to the facts at hand, the rationale shifts to keeping a dangerous criminal from striking again. If that doesn’t apply, we simply say that some horrible acts deserve execution.

The dance of death continues, equally split between tragedy and farce. Perhaps sensing what’s ahead of them, maybe jurors have to laugh to keep from crying.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.