The first woman to be executed in Texas since the American Civil War. Sacrificed on the altar of an inflexible state legalism with no place for mercy and no concept of grace. Her case highlighted rather poignantly the conflict between Law and Grace.
Legalism makes no exceptions for genuine repentance.
Indeed, it has no way of deciding what IS true repentance, because that is spiritually discerned, and legalism is spiritually dead. Legalism in cases like Carla Tucker's can be literally fatal. But even when the results of legalism are not so physically drastic, they are always spiritually devastating. Turn with me to Matthew chapter fifteen. Legalism disallows what is not wrong.