Executed on November 14, 2001

The Honorable Rick Perry
Governor of the State of Texas
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711-2428

Re: Jeffrey Eugene Tucker

Dear Governor Perry:

Jeffrey Tucker is scheduled to be executed on September 11, 2001. On behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, we urge you to commute Mr. Tucker's sentence of death to life imprisonment. A stunning combination of factors in this case merits this extraordinary relief.

Mr. Tucker came into the world in the most unfortunate of circumstances, which never improved throughout his life. A frail child at birth, by the age of five, he had sustained a number of serious head injuries and had been molested. By the age of 8, he had been physically abused by a number of adults and older children, had suffered further head injuries, had been raped, and had been introduced to marijuana. By the time Jeff Tucker was 11, a State psychiatrist had concluded that Jeff Tucker would never be able to remain mentally stable, unless he stayed on anti-psychotic medication for the rest of his life. Mr. Tucker's mother, in whose custody he was at the time, chronically failed to ensure that her son take the medications prescribed. By the time of the crime, Mr. Tucker had become a mentally ill man addicted to drugs in an effort to dull the numerous traumas of his life.

The State has ample records both of the diagnoses issued to the young Jeff Tucker and the failure of his mother to administer the medications. The State's attorney, however, failed to turn these records to Mr. Tucker's trial attorney. As a result, the history of Mr. Tucker's mental illness was not considered at the sentencing phase of his trial.

The ACLU opposes capital punishment in all cases as a barbarous anachronism and in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In Mr. Tucker's case, the extraordinary relief of clemency is particularly warranted, in mercy and as an act of grace, because Mr. Tucker's guilt should be viewed through the prism of his mental illness, of which the jury that sentenced him never had a chance to learn.

Sincerely,

Diann Rust-Tierney
ACLU Capital Punishment Project

William Harrell
ACLU of Texas

Vladimir Kouznetsov
Pro Bono Counsel
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP