Salvation on Death Row

by John T. Thorngren

  Karla Faye, however, did not complete her trial as the same person who entered the Harris County Jail. Watching a spiritually based puppet show performed by a group from Teen Challenge, she became curious and took one of the Bibles they had placed on a table.

  Later she recalled, “I didn’t know what I was reading. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of my cell, on the floor and on my knees. I was just asking God to forgive me.”

  When I saw Karla Faye after this, she was a new person. No longer was she like an emaciated black alley cat on the prowl, an animal wary of all around her. Her eyes sparkled, and you could look into them and see a new creature. Even her dull black hair had taken on luster. We laughed. We cried. We prayed. We began our long-lost childhoods together as new babies in Christ. Karla Faye had no reservations, no qualms, and no doubts that God had forgiven her through Christ Jesus. Her conversion was such a blessing to me and helped to ease my spiritual uncertainties and reassure me of my salvation.

  Praying with Karla Faye, I noticed how natural it is to pray for others and not to pray for yourself. I know that the prayers of others protect us. We prayed fervently during the punishment phase of her trial, and God answered our prayers, as He always does—not as we had hoped, but saying that He had other plans for Karla Faye Tucker. The jury gave her death by lethal injection. I don’t know why at least one of the twelve couldn’t see the shiny new penny before them, that she had “put off the old man and his deeds and have put on the new man,”(52) and that she was “in Christ, a new creature: old things are passed away.”(53)

  By 1984, the State of Texas had changed the mandatory-affirmative, special issue questions before the jury to render the death penalty. They reduced them from three to two but retained the most important one in both our cases:

  “Whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.”

  Why could no one see there was no probability, no possibility of this whatsoever? Perhaps God hardened their hearts like He did Pharaoh’s; certainly He had planned a glorious exodus for Karla Faye. When she returned to the fourth-floor tank, we cried and prayed together. She repeatedly prayed for me not to receive the same verdict in my trial, and I prayed for her to receive a miracle like I had, a successful appeal granting a new trial. Most of all, we prayed for the families of our victims: for their peace and for their forgiveness.

  Karla Faye Tucker is the subject of many books, a movie, and even several songs. The two books I have read are Crossed Over(54) and Karla Faye Tucker Set Free.(55) The first one is more of a true-crime novel that details the homicides. The second, the one I like better, details her spiritual conversion and the fantastic creature that evolved—a newborn butterfly, full of life and never at rest.

  After Karla Faye’s trial, the state kept her there in order to testify against her fall partner, Danny Garrett. It was very difficult for her because she truly loved Danny.

  “I feel so bad about this, Pam. If I testify, I know Danny will get the death penalty for sure. I just wonder if I should do this. I know God is telling me to come completely clean, but I just don’t know.”

  “God has spoken to your heart,” I told her. “You know that He wants you to tell the truth. I did not testify against my fall partner because I didn’t feel it right in my heart, but you know He wants you to testify.”

  “But then I would be a snitch. I shouldn’t do this to him, but I feel inside that I must.”

  “Karla, trust in God. He’s leading you.”

  We talked a lot about this and prayed that God would give her strength. Having to see Danny every day in court was hard on her, but after it was over, he wrote and told her that he understood and still loved her. During this period, we frequently sat in the same waiting area of the criminal justice center; she was there to testify at Danny’s trial, and I at my own trial.

  ***

  “Pam,” Karla Faye asked, “you remember my execution number, the one they gave me on my mugshot when I entered?”

  “I sure do. It was 777. You mumbled something back when we first met about it being good luck and gave a fake ‘ha-ha.’ You know different now, right?”

  “Yes, it’s a Godly number. The number seven appears more than any other number in the Bible, and God gave me three of them. I am so blessed, so blessed to have lived long enough to accept my Savior, Christ Jesus,” and two pairs of eyes glistened.

  Years later, I had the Christian fish, three crosses, and the number 777 tattooed behind my ear.

  “Did I tell you about the execution number on my mugshot?” I asked. “It was 665. I missed the mark of the beast by one number. I have often wondered about the next person, the one who got 666.”

  Danny, of course, did get the death sentence, and Karla Faye transferred to Mountain View Death Row. My trial continued for another four months. Back then, inmates could write to each other; now they cannot. We wrote to each other often. She said she was so lonely, being the only one on Death Row at Mountain View, having no contact with anyone. Gosh, could I sympathize with her.

  CHAPTER 12

  During the preliminaries for my new trial, Christina and her husband, along with Jim Skelton and Robert Pelton, flew to California to visit with my family. Christina is the woman I had become friends with before I became ill at the start of the second trial. They arranged a flight back—Christina paid for it—for my older sister, Joanne; my dad; my stepmom, Helen; my half-sister, Donna (daughter of my dad and Helen); and my son, Joseph. While they were there, Christina asked Joseph whether my dad and Helen were his parents.

  He responded, “Oh, no. They’re not my mom and daddy. I have a mom, and someday she is going to come and get me.”

  Christina and her husband graciously allowed them to stay in their home during the trial. I had not seen my son since he was a year and a half old. He was now six. My dad and stepmom never wrote me—so frustrating and painful, not knowing anything about my son. When Joseph walked into the courtroom, I noticed he had a severe limp. When I questioned Dad and Helen about it, Helen said, “Why, he has always limped like that.” It made me feel so inept, so depressed.

  On October 8, 1984, in the same 248th District courtroom as my first trial but now with Judge Woodrow (Woody) Densen presiding, my trial started in the usual manner with the game of voir dire. This Old French term literally means “to speak the truth” and was intended, through a series of questions, to weed out viable jurors from those who might not be able to render a fair verdict because of such issues as racial bias, preconceived notions, kinship, etc. Now it has become, in addition to its original intent, a head game in which the opposing lawyers wrangle to select the jurors they feel will be more likely to vote for their side. Through a thorny field of rules, the attorneys from each side step lightly with questions for prospective jurors and hope they don’t accidentally crush the fragile roots of a no-no plant that would eventually necessitate a retrial.

  Each side has a certain number of peremptory strikes (somewhere around ten in number, depending on the criminal district in which the trial occurs). A peremptory strike means the attorney can tell the juror, “We don’t want you. Goodbye,” without giving any reason for the dismissal. Oh, but beware if the juror is or is not the same color or gender as the defendant depending on the side who strikes, for therein lies bias danger: grounds for an appeal. Each side also has an unlimited number of strikes for cause, a point that was particularly important in my first trial. If a potential juror is not death qualified, i.e. he openly states that he would not be able to render the death penalty, then after questioning by the defense and the judge, it’s basically, “Mr. Wuss, you are excused. Thank you for your time.”

  The reason I was able to get a second trial was, of course, due to a vacillating venireman, Mr. John O. Vennard, in my first trial. There was another vacillating venireman in this trial,
Mrs. Griggs. Mrs. Griggs do-si-doed (as they say in Texas square dancing) around being able to render the death penalty or not, and the prosecution, of course, challenged her for cause. Judge Densen obviously did not want a repeat of Vennard, so he questioned her and then gave her time to think it over during a long lunch recess. When she returned, she unequivocally stated that she would not support the death penalty. Judge Densen then wisely allowed the defense to question Mrs. Griggs, an act disallowed in my first trial for venireman Vennard. After being satisfied with her response, Judge Densen said, “Mrs. Griggs, you are excused. Thank you for your time.”

  The game is somewhat like the childhood card game Go Fish. Each player gets so many cards and tries to guess what his opponent has and will play.

  “I’ll sacrifice this Catholic card that most probably doesn’t believe in the death penalty because there are some better ones still in the deck, and I might get your Baptist card that most probably believes in the death penalty.”

  “No,” says the defense, “you cannot have my gray-haired, makeup-free, old-lady hippie. Go Fish.”

  The game goes on for days until the court selects twelve jurors and a few alternates. Jury selection is so recognized as a game that I understand one can now play it on the Internet.(56) In an Internet game, a player is given a hypothetical case and the choice of prosecution or defense. He looks at a selection of potential jurors, their religions, professions, etc., and chooses the one he thinks best for his position. After selecting all the jurors he is allowed (six or twelve), a point system determines how well he performed. They should rename jury selection from voir dire to what it truly is, a head game, then translate it into some fancy foreign phrase, or better yet, still in French, jeu de tête. My lawyers felt that we won the head game with a rather good selection. Even the assistant district attorney, Sid Crowley, told me I probably would not get the death penalty.

  Several days before jeu de tête in my trial, Mike Briddle and another Death Row inmate at the Ellis I Unit outside Huntsville constructed a crude fire bomb and tossed it into the cell of a black man, Calvin J. Williams, all in the name of racism and the ideals of Mike’s Aryan Brotherhood. The fact that Calvin’s murder victim was a white woman might have intensified the Brotherhood’s punishment. The Houston Chronicle—following the media’s mantra, if it bleeds it leads—splashed my name in the paper and a recount of my crime along with Mike’s former prison record and membership in the Brotherhood. I got his guilt by association. Just what I needed to influence my upcoming jury! Williams, the black inmate, was severely burned, and his fate never fared for the better after that. In 1990, another Death Row inmate strangled him to death with a jump rope in the recreation yard at the Ellis I Unit.

  I have since learned that the next mugshot number from the State of Texas following my 665, the number 666, the mark of the beast, was assigned to Calvin J. Williams.(57) Although not one to believe in hexes or numerology, I still feel that the coincidence was eerie.

  During these early proceedings, Christina’s husband arranged lunches with my family and me in an anteroom to the court during recess. Judge Woody Densen approved. Below is a picture of my son, Joseph, and me taken by my dad during one of these gatherings. Christina gave me the dress I am wearing. She brought me a new dress every day for the trial.

  Pamela and Joseph, second trial, 1984

  Formal testimony began November 5, and where was my lead attorney, Jim Skelton? Jim Skelton’s absence at the opening of my trial was disturbing, to say the least. The trial started as somewhat of a mirror image of my first trial. The prosecution read my first confession, the written one taken in Denver, word for word. Then Officer West took the stand to recount my second confession. This was the verbal one given on the plane returning from Denver when I said that Linda and Mike were not involved, and I had killed both Banks and Skeens by myself. Officer West made a simple and brief statement of his testimony, the same as he had given in my first trial. No surprises thus far.

  I continued through the trial feeling I had a relatively good chance of not getting the death penalty; that is, until Linda Briddle, now Linda Fletcher, took the stand for the prosecution. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Judge Densen had issued a subpoena to Linda during voir dire on October 19, compelling her to return to Texas to testify for the state. She had called Skelton to help her fight the subpoena through the California courts, and that was where he was on the first day of my trial. On this point, Skelton was representing me, as it was not in my best interest for Linda to testify against me, and initially, his being there with her was to my advantage. Skelton surely knew this, but some strange events took place in California, events that I am now sure were God-ordained.

  The appellate record, Case 94-20759, Appendix B, states, “The period of time when Skelton was in California is a black hole; we have no information about what happened at the hearing.” What did happen, however, was that the State of Texas formally offered Linda transactual immunity in return for her testimony against me. The issue between “use” and “transactual immunity” came up in Linda’s testimony at Mike Briddle’s trial. With formal transactual immunity, she could never be tried in Texas in the future for the murder of Skeens or Banks, a King’s X card, but she had to uphold her part, namely to testify against me. Skelton now had a readily apparent conflict of interest: representing Fletcher against me. She and he both returned to Houston a day or so after my trial began. Again unbeknownst to me but noted in an appellate record, Linda initially stayed at a hotel arranged for by the state, but shortly thereafter, she moved into Skelton’s condominium for the rest of my trial.

  “Ms. Fletcher,” asked the bailiff, “do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” I was naïve enough then to think she would.

  “Were you present during the murder of Robert Skeens?” asked the prosecution.

  “No,” she responded and stared straight at the back of the courtroom. She never looked at me except one time to identify me according to the court’s request.

  “Were you present during the murder of Bob Banks?” Again, “No.”

  I kicked Jim Skelton under the table and whispered, “She’s lying. Ask her about the blood on her blue jeans that they found in Denver. Ask her about her bloody fingerprint on one of the victim’s glasses.”

  “There, there,” said Skelton as he patted my hand. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  But it wasn’t. Every chance she could, Linda answered the prosecution’s questions in a manner that made me out to be a monster, and Skelton sat there like a concrete garden statue. He never once objected to anything from the prosecution’s questioning. I now had the sickening feeling that I had been set up. When it became the defense’s turn to cross-examine Linda, I was one hundred percent convinced of a setup. Skelton began his questions by detailing his personal and professional relationship with Fletcher, and how he had met with her and the victims’ families in order to elicit her testimony at Mike Briddle’s trial.

  “What?” I mouthed. She had talked to the families?

  I had begged Skelton to let me talk to them and say with every part of my heart and soul how I was sorry for what had happened. But no, he wouldn’t let me. But he let her?

  Skelton also brought up her “silver spoon” background and education. What a precious, misguided little girl. Why, she couldn’t possibly be lying. Next, he asked her about what had happened, essentially a repetition of what she had already told the prosecution previously about the Perillo Monster, and he never questioned anything. Then he asked her about points not brought up by the prosecution where she could testify to my “heavy drug involvement,” and that I helped Briddle with his “robberies.” About the drugs, I couldn’t argue; they were responsible for the mess I was in. But robberies with Mike and noted in the plural? There was only one with Mike, and again, no questioning or clarification on Skelton’s part.

&nbs
p; It was later noted that Skelton had discussed the questions for his cross-examination with Linda earlier, and that he did not want her to slip up and contradict anything from her testimony against Briddle. According to the appellate record, “Skelton led Fletcher through her testimony so consistently that the transcript reads as though Skelton himself is testifying. Throughout the lengthy cross-examination, Fletcher predominately gave one-word responses to lengthy, compound questions posed by Skelton.”

  Obvious to me and thankfully to others, Skelton had a conflict of interest. During a recess, I approached Judge Woody Densen at the bench.

  “Judge Densen, I just have to say this. I feel that Jim Skelton is not asking Linda Fletcher the right questions when I know that she is lying. I feel—I know—that he has a conflict of interest.”

  “Ms. Perillo, we will deal with that if it arises.”

  The guilty verdict came swiftly. I expected as much. The punishment phase was the crucial issue, and I knew as I prayed for God’s mercy in their verdict that I would soon join Karla Faye on Death Row. In this part of the trial, Skelton recalled Officer West to the stand—a rather bizarre move, I thought. Why bring my reckless, singular confession out again in the punishment phase? After a few cursory questions, Skelton asked, “Officer West, what did you say when Ms. Perillo said that she killed both Banks and Skeens by herself?”

  “I asked how could someone as small as she do that all by herself?”

  “And she replied?”

  “She said, ‘Give me a rope and a gun and I’ll show you,’” and the Perillo Monster grew larger and uglier.