Authors: Michael W. Cuneo
The purpose of the meeting was to come to a decision on the pope’s request. The governor did most of the talking.
“I’m really moved to grant this,” he said. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
He went on to say that he admired the precision of the request.
“This is something we can say yes to. They’ve asked me to do something that’s entirely within my purview. I’m legally authorized as governor to grant executive clemency. They’re not asking us to change the laws on abortion or the death penalty. Their request is very, very specific.”
There was some frank discussion around the table on both the pros and the cons of granting the commutation. Nobody, however, tried pushing the governor very hard in one direction or the other. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted to do.
Finally, at eleven-fifteen, the meeting drew to an end. Joe Bednar
said: “You give the word, Governor, I’ll draft the commutation order. But I’d like to talk with Jim Justus, the prosecutor in the case, before making it public.”
Carnahan agreed and then went home for the night to the governor’s mansion, where he presumably gave it some more thought and talked it over with his wife.
First thing Thursday morning, January 28, the governor spoke with Bednar and asked him to go ahead with the commutation order.
An hour later, at nine sharp, Bednar got through to Jim Justus. The two men knew one another personally. Back in 1987, while Bednar was working on the sex crimes unit out of the Jackson County prosecutor’s office in Kansas City, Jim had asked for his help with a child molestation incident in Taney County. This was just a month or so after Jim had failed in his bid to secure a death penalty in the David Tate case.
After a bit of catching up, Bednar dropped his bombshell: Darrell Mease wasn’t going to be executed. The pope had personally interceded on Darrell’s behalf and the governor had agreed to commute his death sentence.
Jim was flabbergasted. “This was my only successful death-penalty case,” he said.
Before ringing off, however, he assured Bednar that he had no hard feelings over the deal.
“Listen,” he said, “if I was there, and the pope asked me, I’d say okay, too.”
This first piece of business accomplished, Bednar now put the finishing touches on the commutation order. The final draft read as follows:
I, Mel Carnahan, Governor of the state of Missouri, have had presented personally and directly to me by Pope John Paul II, a request for mercy in the case of Darrell Mease who was convicted of First Degree Murder on April 25, 1990, and sentenced to death on June 1, 1990. After careful consideration of the extraordinary circumstance of the Pontiff’s direct and personal appeal for mercy and because of the deep and abiding respect I have for him and all that he represents, I hereby grant to Darrell Mease a commutation of the above sentence in the following respect: This commutation eliminates from the sentence the penalty of death and further causes Darrell Mease to remain incarcerated for the remainder of his life without the possibility of parole.
A
T TEN O’CLOCK
on Thursday morning, Laura Tyler was interviewing a prospective client at an alternative school in Kansas City when she was summoned to the front office. There was a phone call waiting for her, she was told. A phone call? Laura was perplexed. Why would anyone be trying to reach her here? She certainly didn’t consider herself an important person. She didn’t carry a pager, and the only reason she had a car phone was to stay in touch with her husband and kids. She wasn’t accustomed to having people track her down while she was out in the field.
It was a secretary from her law firm, saying Joe Bednar from the governor’s office was on the line. Laura knew Bednar, and from their limited contact over the years she liked him a great deal. They’d first become acquainted when Laura was working as an assistant public defender in Jackson County and Bednar was interning for the county prosecutor’s office.
“Have you been following the pope’s visit?” Bednar asked.
“Well, a little bit,” Laura said. “Why Joe? What’s going on?”
Bednar sketched out the crucial events of the past twenty-four hours, but it was almost too much for Laura to digest. The pope’s people meeting in secret with the governor over the fate of her client? The pope interceding with the governor on Darrell’s behalf? She’d had no idea any of this was happening. Her initial astonishment soon gave way to immense gratitude. She recalled the simple prayer with which she’d ended her fellowship meeting three days earlier.
Thy will be done
. She’d put everything in God’s hands and
this was the result. Her prayer had been answered, and Darrell’s unflinching faith had been vindicated.
But perhaps not entirely so. At least not yet. In the thrill of the moment, Laura remembered that Darrell had been counting on more than getting off death row. He’d also been counting on getting out of prison altogether. He’d made this clear to her at their very first meeting. God was his lawyer, he’d said, and God didn’t settle for halfway victories. In God’s good time, he’d be dancing off the row, and dancing right out the front door. This was why Laura, in the petition she’d filed with the governor’s office a couple of weeks earlier, had been careful to ask for a full pardon rather than just executive clemency. A full pardon meant release from prison, total freedom, no strings attached.
As grateful as she was, then, Laura still managed to keep the larger picture in focus.
“You know everything my client has asked for,” she said.
“Laura,” Bednar said, “you didn’t get everything you asked for.”
Bednar suggested she call him from her office so he could fill her in on all the details.
After phoning her husband from her car with the news, Laura drove back to her office and put the call through to Bednar.
He told her that her client wouldn’t be going free. The governor’s mercy had extended only so far. Darrell would be spending the remainder of his days behind bars.
Laura’s next move was to call Darrell at Potosi. She felt some anxiety waiting for him to come to the phone, aware that the commutation wasn’t everything he’d staked his faith on.
“Hi Laura,” he said. “How you doing?”
“Just fine, Darrell. I’ve got some news. I think it’s good news but it’s not everything you wanted.”
Darrell listened quietly as Laura laid out the commutation deal. He wasn’t especially surprised. He wasn’t jubilant. He didn’t jump and shout. If anything, he was initially troubled over the way the deal had gone down. He’d always known that he wouldn’t be executed. He’d always known that there’d be some sort of divine intervention. This had never been an issue for him. He’d never entertained
a moment’s doubt. But the pope’s involvement was something he hadn’t banked on. And this is partly what troubled him. It wasn’t just that the pope was the head of a faith for which Darrell held little affection. It was also that he was so famous, easily the most recognizable religious leader in the world. Darrell had always wanted his release from death row to be a demonstration of the power and glory of God. Now he was worried that people would be missing the point. They’d be giving the pope credit whereas, in truth, the credit was all God’s. Through no fault of his own, perhaps, the pope would be taking glory away from its rightful source.
This was a major concern of Darrell’s, and so too was the matter of his sentence being reduced to life without parole. He’d always assumed that the miracle that sprung him from death row would also spring him from prison altogether. He’d assumed it would be a one-shot deal. Life without parole wasn’t the total victory he’d been anticipating. He found it hard for the moment accepting it as a victory at all. He couldn’t see himself spending the rest of his life behind bars, especially not when he’d been holding out for so much more.
He asked Laura what the commutation meant for the future. Would it foreclose all legal possibility of his ever being released?
Laura said she’d get Kent Gipson on the phone for a three-way conversation. Kent was the ranking expert on matters of this sort.
By the time Kent joined in, several minutes later, Darrell had already adjusted his thinking. He’d decided that the commutation was a good thing after all. God must have worked it this way for a reason. And who was he to question God? He’d been wrong to assume it would be a one-shot deal. He’d still be leaving prison, but on God’s timetable—not his own, not anyone else’s.
Kent was struck by how calm Darrell seemed, how remarkably under control. Anyone else who’d just been brought back from the dead would be bursting at the seams with elation. But then again, Kent knew Darrell. He knew that the possibility of actually being executed had never entered his mind.
He assured Darrell that the commutation was a marvelous stroke of good fortune. It had kept him alive, and so long as he was alive, there was always the chance of his finding some way out of prison.
Darrell returned to his cell in protective custody, grateful but hardly triumphant. The commutation, he was convinced, was only a partial and provisional victory. The full victory would come later.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
L
ATE THURSDAY MORNING
, January 28, the governor’s office put out a press release in Carnahan’s name making it official.
“Yesterday afternoon,” it began, “Pope John Paul II asked me to commute the death sentence of Darrell Mease. The Pope asked me to, in his words, ‘have mercy on Mr. Mease’ … I continue to support capital punishment but … I decided last night to grant [the pope’s] request. I commuted the sentence of Darrell Mease to life in prison without the possibility of parole.”
Later the same day the governor met with the media in Washington, where he’d flown on state business.
“It was one of those moments that one would never expect to happen in one’s life and would never expect to happen again,” he said of his encounter with the pope at the Cathedral Basilica. “I felt that this response from me was appropriate.”
A reporter asked how he’d respond if the pope appealed to him sometime down the line on behalf of another death-row inmate.
“I will take care of that at the time,” he said. “[Inmates] can expect to receive the punishment that was meted out by the court, unless there are extenuating circumstances or their trial was not fair or something of that nature.”
In Rome, at roughly the same time, Joaquin Navarro-Valls was telling reporters of the pope’s delight with the commutation.
“On learning the news of the governor’s generous decision,” he said, “the holy father expressed great satisfaction for the gesture of high humanity on the part of Mel Carnahan, governor of the state of Missouri.”
So there it was: Darrell Mease, one of the last true Ozark hillbillies, had become the first person in the history of the United States to have his death sentence commuted through the direct intervention of a religious leader from outside the country. And not just any religious leader, but the inestimable Pope John Paul II, certainly one of the most important spiritual figures of the age. Darrell, a most unlikely candidate for celebrity status, had suddenly become the talk of the nation.
Darrell’s second wife, Donna, was visiting her sister’s house when news of the commutation came on television. She remembers feeling thunderstruck, incapable of believing at first that what she was hearing was actually true.
“It was so incredible, Darrell always insisting that he’d never be executed, the pope’s involvement, everything. Then, when it really sank in, I started crying. I’d lived with Darrell. I’d been married to him and had two kids with him. I was terribly conflicted. I was mainly happy for Lexie, who I love and think the world of. It was Lexie, I thought, who deserved the most credit for the commutation, this good woman who got down on her knees every night praying for Darrell’s life to be spared. I was also happy for my kids—that they wouldn’t have to go through the trauma and stigmatization of their father getting executed. This whole ordeal had been horrific for them, so terrible, terrible, terrible. I doubt Darrell even recognized what he’d put us through.”
Darrell’s sister was at home in West Des Moines, Iowa, when she heard the news. “Darrell’s lawyer phoned my mama right after she talked to Darrell, and then my mama phoned me. She was happy, of course, but not really surprised. She and Darrell were the only people who knew all along that the execution wouldn’t take place. Then my friends and co-workers asked me about it because they knew Darrell was my brother. They asked if I was shocked. I said no, but I’m very happy and very proud of my brother.”
Early evening, January 28, Jack Graves had friends over at his house in Palmdale. He was regaling them with wild stories of some of his friends and relatives from back home in Missouri when something caught his eye on the TV set in the corner of the living room. It was recycled news footage of his cousin Darrell walking down the courthouse corridor in Springfield after his death sentence had been handed down. “Damn,” Jack said. “That’s old Darrell. Now what’s this all about?” He hurried over and turned up the volume. The pope and Darrell—this was the wildest story of all. Even Jack had nothing to compete with it.
The Reverend Larry Rice had attended the interfaith prayer service at the Cathedral Basilica. He’d seen the pope descend from the altar and speak with the governor, and he’d wondered what it was about. Early the next afternoon he found out. Driving to an appointment in St. Louis, he heard the story on the car radio. Larry immediately thought of the angry letter that Darrell had sent a couple of months earlier chiding him for lack of faith. He thought of Darrell’s absolute insistence over the years that he’d never be executed, that he’d be rescued by one of God’s “suddenlys.” And this, Larry thought, was exactly what had happened. Darrell had been right.
“I was blown away,” Larry recalled. “Darrell had never asked the pope to say a word on his behalf. He’d simply continued to pray. Absolutely remarkable. And I thought there was a lesson here for all of us. The Scriptures are radical, and God’s mercy is boundless. But most Christians don’t truly appreciate this. We’re too timid in our faith. We needed someone like Darrell Mease to drive it home.”