Pope’s Appeal for Mercy Saves Murderer’s Life

Acceding to a plea for mercy from Pope John Paul II, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan on Thursday granted clemency to a triple murderer due to be executed next month, saying he would spare the convict’s life simply because the pope had asked him to.

Legal experts called the decision unprecedented.

“I know of no other request for commutation that was even largely, let alone solely, granted because of a papal request,” said Victor Streib, a leading scholar on capital punishment and dean of Ohio Northern University Law School. “Religious opposition to the death penalty is nothing new, but usually, it’s not sufficient.”

Surprised by Carnahan’s decision, death penalty opponents hoped that it would spark a movement to abolish state executions--or at least give political cover to other governors who might want to show mercy.

Advocates of capital punishment, meanwhile, complained that Carnahan had subverted the judicial process by treating clemency as a favor to a religious leader.

What’s more, they said, Darrell Mease had no good claim to clemency--having confessed to ambushing and shotgunning his former drug partner, the man’s wife and their disabled grandson. Mease later claimed the confession had been coerced.

“It raises real due process questions when a guy is convicted by a jury and every court upholds [his death sentence] and the governor, for no apparent reason, commutes the sentence,” Missouri state Sen. Steve Ehlmann said.

But legal scholars said Carnahan’s decision, while unusual, was not unconstitutional and would set no precedent for other death row inmates. Governors in most states retain the absolute power to pardon; they need not give any explanation whatsoever.

“What’s unusual here is the seemingly blatant influence of a religious figure in a purely secular decision,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at USC.

“We might criticize it from a political standpoint, but that doesn’t make it illegal,” Chemerinsky added. “[And] the fact that one person had his sentence commuted does not mean that any other person has the right to have his sentence commuted.”

In commuting the death sentence of Mease, 52--whose attorney called the clemency a “miracle”--Carnahan said he was acting out of “a deep and abiding respect for the pontiff and all he represents.” That respect, however, did not prompt a complete conversion: Carnahan, a Democrat, said he still supports capital punishment.

Indeed, Carnahan has allowed 26 executions to go forward in his six years as governor. He has granted clemency just once, to a convicted murderer who was diagnosed with mental impairments that made him incapable of understanding his death sentence.

He has turned aside at least one papal request for mercy in the past, refusing to block the execution of a man convicted of killing a state trooper. And just this month, he denied clemency to a man convicted of two murders in California and one in St. Louis, even though appeals were still pending on the California convictions.

But Mease’s case was different.

Different not because there were doubts about his guilt, not because he had reformed himself in prison, not because his mental state was shaky or his trial had been unfair.

Mease’s case was different because of a scheduling quirk.

He was originally scheduled to die this week. Then the state Supreme Court postponed the execution until Feb. 10. The court did not explain the move, but most analysts figured the justices wanted to avoid executing Mease while the Holy Father was visiting St. Louis.

Publicity about the postponement brought Mease’s case to the pope’s attention. The pontiff spoke out strongly against the death penalty in general during a Mass before 100,000 people in St. Louis Wednesday morning. And at a brief meeting with Carnahan--a Baptist--John Paul requested mercy for Mease in particular.

“The governor was quite moved,” Carnahan spokesman Chris Sifford said.

A preliminary staff review of Mease’s case had not turned up any sound arguments for clemency, “and the bottom line was, he probably would have been executed” if John Paul had not intervened, Sifford said.

“The fact that the pope was here in St. Louis, the fact that he had a face-to-face meeting with the governor, that probably made the difference,” Sifford added.

While he acknowledged that the governor would likely be flooded with “me-too” requests for clemency, Sifford said Carnahan did not view the Mease case as an index by which all others should be measured. Rather, the governor considered it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to honor the pope’s request after he had honored St. Louis with a visit.

Mease still must serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, but his lawyer described him as “awe-struck” at his reprieve.

However Jim Justus, a prosecutor in the case against Mease, said he still feels Mease deserves to be executed. “I’m disappointed with [the governor’s] decision,” Justus said, “but I respect it.”

Although Carnahan explicitly acknowledged the pope’s influence, legal analysts said the decision did not breach the constitutional firewall between church and state.

“As long as [Carnahan] is not favoring one religion over another or endorsing any particular religion, I don’t think it’s a problem,” said Joerg Knipprath, a law professor at Southwestern University in Los Angeles.

Carnahan’s decision pleased the Vatican, where the pope issued a statement expressing “great satisfaction for this gesture of great humanity.”

But it brought immediate fire from political opponents of the governor, who plans to run for the U.S. Senate in 2000. “This guy [Mease] was saved by the calendar,” complained Ehlmann, the Republican floor leader of the Missouri Senate.

If Carnahan was so moved by the pope’s condemnation of the death penalty, Ehlmann said, “the appropriate thing to do would be to start a dialogue on the issue, rather than simply picking the next person on death row” for clemency.

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Rome contributed to this story.