GOVERNOR SAYS SPARING INMATE AT POPE'S BEHEST WON'T BIND HIM IN FUTURE

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- With a papal plea, the governor's grace and a
lottery winner's luck, convicted triple murderer Darrell Mease has
escaped the death penalty.

It remains to be seen whether Gov. Mel Carnahan will evade political
consequences for commuting Mease's sentence to life in prison
following a face-to-face plea from Pope John Paul II.

"God help him if there are any grieving relatives (of Mease's
victims), because he will need the pope to come back to campaign for
him," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

On 26 occasions, Carnahan has allowed the death penalty to proceed.
Before Thursday, he had commuted a death sentence just once, for a man
whose jury wasn't told of his mental retardation.

The pope has spoken out frequently against capital punishment and he
did so again during his two-day visit to St. Louis this week. In 1991,
before Carnahan was governor, the pope asked Missouri to reduce the
sentence of Glennon Sweet for killing a state trooper. Carnahan
reviewed Sweet's case, but declined to halt his execution last year.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal
Angelo Sodano, met with Carnahan and relayed the pope's plea for
Mease. Later, the pope, after a prayer service at a St. Louis church,
came down off the altar and personally asked the governor to "extend
mercy" to Mease, Carnahan said.

Mease was convicted of killing a former drug partner, Lloyd Lawrence,
69; his wife, Frankie Lawrence, 56; and their grandson, William
Lawrence, 19, in May 1988. They were shot to death.

His Jan. 27 execution date was set last November by the state Supreme
Court. Four days later, the court changed the execution date to Feb.
10. The court didn't give a reason, but many believed it was because
the papal visit to St. Louis would coincide with the execution.

Carnahan announced his decision in Washington, defending it and insisting
that it didn't bind him to any course of action in the future. The plea
from the pope, under the ancient mosaics and soaring dome of the St. Louis
Cathedral Basilica, created "extraordinary circumstances," he said.