Excerpts from Tucker's letter seeking reprieve

Tucker Profile: Facing death with memories of murder Transcripts: Larry King interviews Tucker Larry King debate on Tucker case Statistics: Women on Death Row Poll: Should gender be an issue? Message Board: Debating the death penalty Excerpts: Tucker's letter seeking reprieve

Here are excerpts from a lengthy letter Karla Faye Tucker recently sent to Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, to plead that her death sentence be commuted to life in prison.

• "I will not ask you to consider my gender as a factor in your decision. When we are talking about the crime I committed gender has no place as an issue. I come to you as a person, an individual ...."
  
  
• "... I am in no way attempting to minimize the brutality of my crime. It obviously was very, very horrible and I do take full responsibility for what happened .... I will pay the price for what I did in any way our law demands it. But in our laws I know that we have commutation for death row inmates ...."
  
  
• "A long time ago I tried to blame my mother for how I ended up. I tried to blame drugs. I tried to blame our society. I tried to blame everybody but myself. I no longer blame anyone for my actions."
  
  
• "It was in October, three months after I had been locked up, when a ministry came to the jail and I went to the services, that night accepting Jesus into my heart. When I did this, the full and overwhelming weight and reality of what I had done hit me. I realized for the first time that night what I had really done. I began crying that night for the first time in many years, and to this day, tears are a part of my life."
  
  
• "I feel the pain of that night, and I feel the pain that goes on every day with others because of what I did that night. I know the evil that was in me then, and I know that what took place that night was so horrible that only a monster could do it."
  
  
• "If you decide you must carry out this execution, do it based solely on the brutality and heinousness of my crime. But please don't do it based on me being a future threat to society ... I believe I am a positive contributor to our society and helping others."
  
  
• "I have purposed to do right for the last 14 years, not because I am in prison but because my God demands this of me. I know right from wrong and must do right."
  
  
• "So I don't really understand why you can't, or won't, consider my change for the good in my favor."
  
  
• "I can't bring back the lives I took. But I can, if I am allowed, help save lives. That is the only real restitution I can give ...."

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