"It seems like God has given her another chance."

Those are the words of Rhonda Labroi, Paula Cooper's sister.

Paula Then:                                                                   And Now:
  

She looks so cuddly in a mommyish sort of way, don't you think?

I first came across the name Paula Cooper in the late 80's - in a student's research paper, actually, a paper so well put together that I still use it today as a model for study. Its title is "In Support of the Death Penalty for Murder," and in it we are told that the 15 year old Miss Cooper, accompanied by three other girls ranging in age from 14 to 16, smoked some pot, drank some wine, and then visited a

local Sunday school teacher who lived nearby. Cooper pulled a 12-inch butcher knife and stabbed the 78 year old woman 33 times as the victim recited the Lord's Prayer as she died. Cooper, who confessed to the crime, was sentenced to death. Anti-death penalty activists in Europe, particularly in Italy, have now rallied around her as a focal point for "...the inappropriateness of capital punishment for juveniles," calling her "sensitive, intelligent and repented."

In fact, Europe was so smitten with her that an Italian Catholic priest was able to bring to America a petition with over 2 million Italian signatures on it. (You can see a picture of him offering Miss Cooper encouragement on this page.) John Paul II himself pleaded for clemency. Never underestimate the power of a pope's prayer: on Monday, June 17th, Paula Cooper was not only granted clemency, but released from prison and allowed to go home.

Why? In 1988 Indiana's high court ruled it unconstitutional to execute people who were under 16 at the time of the crime, and commuted Cooper's sentence to sixty years. With (under Indiana law) one day off her sentence for each day of good behavior, she is now a free woman. And we musn't discount the influence of Bill Pelke, the murder victim's grandson, who, at the time of the crime, was a believer in the death penalty but at some point saw the light and now agitates against it. He's been Cooper's biggest supporter, even uploading videos to You Tube to tell everyone the good news. He somehow "knows" that his grandma would have wanted mercy for Paula. I don't know how he knows it, but let's all join hands and sing praise to the Lord.

The victim's name, by the way, was Ruth Pelke, a Bible studies teacher. Cooper and her cohorts apparently conned their way into her home by pretending interest in Biblical wisdom. Their intention was to rob her, which they proceeded to do, taking her car keys and, of course, the car and scrounging around for another ten dollars. What a haul. Then things get a little murky. In Miss Cooper's words:

Once we got inside, it was like, "What do we do now?" ...And everything just started happening...It was a long time ago, and there are some things I can remember about it and some things I don't, but it just was never the intention, we just never had the intention of hurting anybody.

Well, after you plunged the foot-long butcher knife into her, did you think that might hurt her? How about after the tenth plunge? By the time we get to 33, if you're still imagining that you have no intention of hurting her, then you ought to be executed for sheer stupidity and moral aphasia. Says the article:

While records place the knife in Cooper's hands, she said it was in everyone's at some point...Cooper said they were “panicking, and then just one thing is leading to another, and everything is just moving really fast.”

Yeah. It happens to all of us. Time just gets away and pretty soon it's all so much a blur we can hardly be certain of what happened. When time starts "moving really fast," it's beyond human control. And when you're stabbing someone, how can you possibly remember how many times you did it, especially when you're hopped up on booze and pot?

Cooper said she felt like they [the other girls] conspired against her to get favorable sentences, and that she, in turn, took the biggest fall. “I think one of the misconceptions is that I was some ringleader of this big murder; that's not true,” said Cooper, who had no prior criminal record. “What I want people to know is that all four of us were guilty, and that's the bottom line. There was no innocent person in that house.”

All this reminds me of an interview with Miss Cooper that I saw on TV many years ago. I believe it was in an A&E documentary called "The Death Penalty on Trial," a special episode of "American Justice," and during Miss Cooper's brief appearance I saw the self-justifying, narcissistic psychopath incarnate. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it online.

If Miss Cooper, in trying to loosen the noose of blame, means to say that her merry band of murdering girl-buds should also have been sentenced to death, I might summon some measure of respect for her. But of course that's not at all what she means. What she means is that

I mean, I don't care if I have to sweep floors, wash dishes or flip hamburgers, I'm going to take what I can get, you know, just to get on my feet and show people that I deserve a chance. Because I've done my time.

Her time comes to less than 30 years for stabbing someone to death. 33 times. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33.

On the brighter side, she has turned her life around. After initially running into some disciplinary problems in prison, like having sex with the guards, she got her GED and eventually acquired a Bachelor's degree via correspondence course. Maybe that accounts for her unfamiliarity with English grammar: e.g., (referring to her prison job as a tutor in the culinary arts) "There's a lot of people in there that's never cooked before..." and, "...if I had've disappointed her..."

Maybe I shouldn't pick on trivialities. After all, she attributes her "growth to God's intervention." Cooper doesn't bother to elaborate on how exactly He intervened. As Karla Faye Tucker, whose conversion was fairly convincing, sat on her deathbed gurney, she addressed those on the other side of the one-way windows:

"I would like to say to all of you, the Thornton family and Jerry Dean's family, that I am so sorry. I hope God will give you peace with this." She then whispered a farewell to her husband and thanked the warden for his kindness to her in her last hours.

In the interviews with Cooper, the fact that the name of Jesus is missing is less bothersome than the complete invisibility of some kind of "I'm sorry. I beg the forgiveness of Ruth Pelke's family, and would, should they be willing, indenture myself to them for the remainder of my days if it would bring them any peace, or make any reparation for my sins. I ask Ruth Pelke in heaven likewise to forgive me and to intercede for me, that I be given the fortitude to walk in virtue the rest of my life. The act I committed against her has weighed upon my conscience daily and plagued my sleep with nightmares. I thank God that He has taken pity on me, lifted me out of my former evil, and offered me the possibility of salvation. If my death were the only thing that would set things right, I would gladly go to it."

What we get instead is: "I've done my time." "We should pay for our crimes and we should, you know, take our punishment. But everybody deserves a second chance."

"My time." "Deserves." I've often wondered about that. If I become a murderer, is "my time" any longer really my own? Or does it belong instead to my victim, since every breath I take is one that I have taken from him? Isn't it Ruth Pelke's time that Cooper is living? Ruth was old, 78, and didn't have much of it left. Even if she were down to her last minute, and it were taken from her unjustly, the perpetrator's time is no longer his own, for the reverberations are felt in eternity. And if a murderer can be said to "deserve" anything, it is not a second chance at life, but a final chance to repent. Clemency might or might not come, but whichever way it goes, the truly repentant killer ought to welcome the outcome, for he was granted that which he denied to his victim: time to prepare.

Well, maybe Ruth Pelke was prepared. All she wanted to do was share stories from the Bible.