TERRE HAUTE, Ind., June 19 -- After apologizing for the grief he had caused, convicted murderer Juan Raul Garza was put to death by federal executioners today on the same padded gurney where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh died eight days ago.

Garza spoke his last words at 7:04 a.m. Central time, strapped on the table and covered to his shoulders by a crisp white sheet. Three tubes stretched into his body from an opening in the far wall, ready for the mix of chemicals that would kill him five minutes later.

He turned his face toward the prison warden and the viewing room beyond, where relatives of his murder victims watched from behind a tinted window. "I just want to say that I'm sorry and I apologize for all the pain and grief that I have caused," he said. "I ask for your forgiveness. And God bless." At 7:05 a.m., Warden Harley G. Lappin received the order to proceed. The poisons that would stop Garza's lungs, then his heart, flowed silently, one at a time, each taking about 60 seconds to cross the room and disappear under the sheet. Garza, who had moved his feet nervously before the execution began, blinked a few times and then was still. Like McVeigh, he died with his eyes open.

The long legal fight over Garza's execution had ended quietly Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down two of his appeals to halt the execution and President Bush rejected a clemency plea. They were not persuaded by arguments that the federal death penalty is enforced unequally against minorities and that Garza was treated unfairly during his trial. "Some day this precise savagery will end. But not today," defense attorney Greg Wiercioch told reporters on the prison grounds. "Today, President Bush had the last word. But he will not have the final say on the death penalty. History will."

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush was notified of the execution one minute after Garza was declared dead. "The president believes strongly that the death penalty, when it's administered fairly and effectively, and when defendants have full access to the courts, serves as a deterrent to crime," Fleischer said.

The orderly scene at the U.S. Penitentiary here was only a faint echo of the hubbub that surrounded the June 11 execution of McVeigh, who was convicted of killing 168 people in the 1995 bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. McVeigh was the first federal prisoner executed since 1963.
 
Absent this time were the competing demonstrations of death penalty supporters and foes. About 50 capital punishment opponents sang "We Shall Overcome" in a fenced protest area as Garza, 44, was being executed. The grassy area set aside for execution supporters remained empty. Gone also was much of the media circus. The 1,000-plus journalists given credentials for the McVeigh execution were replaced by a few dozen. There was no satellite feed to victims and their families. This time, four relatives of Garza's victims watched, along with 10 journalists and one person identified as his spiritual adviser.

Garza's family honored his request to stay away. His 12-year-old son and 10 year-old daughter stayed in a hotel with relatives. The boy told a lawyer Monday: "I don't want to be in the place where they kill my father." Liz Garza -- the children's mother and Garza's ex-wife -- spent the execution hour with Garza's adult daughter from a first marriage and nuns on the campus of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College.

"The only thing making me okay is to know he's in heaven," said Norma Garza, 24. "What hurts me is that I'm going to miss him so much." Relatives of Garza's victims declined most requests for interviews. Garza, by his own admission, ran a marijuana smuggling operation. In 1991, he fatally shot Thomas Rumbo, manager of a Harlingen, Tex., trucking company. Rumbo had agreed to help the government pursue Garza after officers intercepted a marijuana shipment on one of Rumbo's trucks. Garza, accused of importing at least 2,200 pounds of marijuana into Brownsville, Tex., also ordered the killing of two Brownsville men. Garza was convicted in 1993 under a federal drug law.

Wiercioch noted that Garza was the only federal death row inmate whose jurors were not told that he would spend his life in prison without parole if they did not sentence him to death. Garza's attorneys also maintained that the federal death penalty is enforced unfairly, penalizing minorities and people who live in certain states. Sixteen of the 18 federal inmates sentenced to die are racial or ethnic minorities.

But a Justice Department report released this month asserted that white defendants are actually slightly more likely than minorities to face the death penalty. During Garza's final hours -- after a last meal of steak, french fries, onion rings and diet soda -- he spoke with his spiritual adviser and asked warden Lappin to deliver messages to friends on death row.

By 6:30 a.m., Garza had been moved the few feet from his holding cell and was strapped onto the gurney. When officials opened the opaque turquoise curtains at 7:03 a.m., Garza scanned the witnesses' faces. He made his final statement, and U.S. Marshal Frank Anderson raised the receiver of a red telephone.

"May we proceed with the execution?" Anderson asked the Justice command center. He turned to Lappin and said, "Warden, you may proceed with the execution."  Garza's eyes looked distant, and then went dull. The edges of his lips turned slightly blue. Four minutes after the chemicals started flowing, Lappin said, "Inmate Garza died at 7:09 a.m., Central Daylight Time. This concludes the execution."

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