Appeals Court in Texas Rejects Tucker Bid for Stay of Execution

The state’s highest criminal court on Wednesday rejected pickax killer Karla Faye Tucker’s bid to keep from becoming the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

The Court of Criminal Appeals turned aside her argument that the state’s clemency process is unconstitutional.

Tucker, who is scheduled to die Tuesday by injection, has asked the Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute her sentence to life in prison. The board can deny her request or forward a recommendation to Gov. George W. Bush.

Tucker, 38, was condemned for murdering a man and a woman with a pickax during a 1983 break-in.

The former rock band groupie and drug-addicted prostitute has insisted that she found God behind bars and would be content spending the rest of her life in prison doing his work.

A spokeswoman for Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson said Wednesday that his “700 Club” television program will broadcast the last prison interview with Tucker on the day she is scheduled to be executed.

Robertson, who supports the death penalty, has said Tucker should be spared to continue preaching to fellow convicts. The interview was conducted Tuesday.

“She feels very strongly about what the Lord has done in her life,” said Robertson’s spokeswoman, Patty Silverman. “She wanted to be sure that the message of what God did in her life got out.”

Tucker’s attorneys said they would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stay her execution. The Supreme Court refused in December to hear an appeal from Tucker, but attorney David Botsford said this motion would make new legal arguments.

Texas last executed a woman in 1863, when Chipita Rodriguez was hanged for the murder of a horse trader.

The only woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976 was Velma Barfield. She died by injection in North Carolina in 1984 for poisoning her boyfriend.