Karla Faye Tucker was sentenced to death by lethal injection on April 25, 1984, but her day of execution wouldn’t come for almost 15 years. Three months into her time on death row, Tucker stole a Bible and, through it, became a convert to Christianity. It was a conversion, Texas Monthly reported, that was aided by the break prison gave her from the drugs and sex that had been such a large part of her life up until then.
Tucker’s commitment to religion and her remorse for her actions seemed genuine; death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean wrote in The New York Review of Books that all the prison officers who knew Tucker considered her a “model prisoner.” As the date of her execution approached in 1998, her faith and her gender won international support for her commutation. Pope John Paul II himself weighed in on her behalf (per CNN), as did the brother of the woman Tucker had helped kill. But Texas governor George W. Bush would not commute Tucker’s sentence.
On February 3, 1998, the 38-year-old Tucker ate her last meal. Per the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, she asked for a banana, a peach, and a garden salad with ranch dressing. Neal Auch, who later did a still-life photo of her meal as part of a series, found it a simple request compared to the typical extravagant meals many death row inmates ask for. Her meal done, Tucker was strapped down, said her final farewells, and received her injections. Per The Washington Post, she was pronounced dead at 6:45 PM.
