WASHINGTON -- Death penalty opponents vowed Tuesday to continue their campaign despite losing a battle to stop the second federal execution in just eight days.
 
"I do know that justice does not demand death," said Greg Wiercioch, lead  attorney for drug kingpin and murderer Juan Raul Garza, 44, who was executed in Terre Haute, Ind. "Today, President Bush had the last word. But he will not have the final say on the death penalty. History will."
 
Bush denied Garza's appeal for clemency late Monday. That cleared the way
for Garza to die in the same chamber where, last week, Oklahoma City  bomber Timothy McVeigh became the first federal prisoner to be executed in 38 years.
 
Garza was convicted in the murders of three associates in a drug ring in South Texas.  Unlike McVeigh, Garza expressed remorse for his actions in a brief, final statement.  "I want to say that I'm sorry and I apologize for all the pain and grief that I have caused," he said just before a lethal dose of chemicals was administered. "I ask your forgiveness, and God bless."

Garza's guilt was never in question, but his lawyers had argued that he should be spared because the federal death-penalty system was biased against minority defendants. Garza was Mexican-American.
 
A recent Justice Department analysis of death penalty cases found that blacks and Hispanics represented about 80% of defendants in death penalty  cases. The same study concluded that prosecutors' decisions in those cases did not involve racial or ethnic bias.
 
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has ordered a deeper study of the racial
and ethnic implications of the death penalty, has rejected calls for a moratorium on executions.
 
But the statistics related to race and ethnicity remain a source of deep concern among death penalty opponents.  "The failure of the Bush administration to seriously examine the issues raised by the case of Juan Raul Garza is indefensible and calls into question the commitment of the U.S. government to ensure equal protection of the law," said a written statement from the group Citizens for a Moratorium on Federal Executions.

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