Killer Granted 2nd Stay of Execution
John Henry

Houston Chronicle
December 8, 2000

WASHINGTON - President Clinton postponed for a second time Thursday the scheduled execution of convicted killer Juan Raul Garza, a decision that leaves the fate of the South Texas drug dealer in the hands of the next president. Garza, who would have been the first person executed by the federal government since the Kennedy administration, had been scheduled to die by injection on Tuesday.

In a statement announcing his decision to put off Garza's execution until June, Clinton said he wants to give the Justice Department time to finish studying the racial and geographic disparities in federal death penalty cases. "Whether one supports the death penalty or opposes it, there should be no question that the gravity and finality of the penalty demand that we be certain that when it is imposed, it is imposed fairly," Clinton said. "In this area there is no room for error."

Garza, a 44-year-old former resident of Brownsville, is among 19 federal inmates awaiting execution in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Of the condemned inmates, 15 are minorities and four - including convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh - are white. Garza was convicted in 1993 of ordering three murders to further control over a drug-smuggling organization that allegedly moved more than 7,000 pounds of marijuana through South Texas from 1982 to 1992. In an appeal for clemency, Garza acknowledged his guilt but argued that his sentence should be reduced to life in prison, saying the execution has more to do with race and geography than the seriousness of his crimes.

Justice Department figures show that of the 682 people charged with federal crimes punishable by death over the past five years, more than 80 percent are minorities. From 1988 to 1994, the death penalty was sought in five federal cases in Texas and all were against Hispanic defendants, including Garza. Garza's attorney, Gregory Viercioch, said he was "relieved in one sense that the president acknowledged the serious problems with the federal death penalty system." At the same time, the Houston lawyer said, further study will not change the unfairness of the way the federal government sentences people to death. "I don't believe further studies will ever give the next president, whoever it may be, the assurance that race and geography did not play a role in the government's decision to seek the death penalty against Juan Garza," Viercioch said.

In the summer, Clinton - who supports the death penalty - postponed Garza's execution from Aug. 5 until Dec. 12 to give the Justice Department time to revise guidelines for clemency appeals. Since then the White House has been hit with a flurry of requests for clemency or a sentence commutation for Garza, along with calls for a moratorium on federal executions. Among those lobbying for a halt to federal executions were French President Jacques Chirac and Pope John Paul II.

Clinton's decision to put off Garza's execution was announced within hours of a recommendation from Attorney General Janet Reno, a death penalty opponent who nevertheless has allowed federal prosecutors to seek executions in 161 cases over the past seven years. In his statement accompanying the reprieve, Clinton cautioned against viewing it as a victory for death-penalty opponents. "In issuing the stay, I have not decided that the death penalty should not be imposed in this case, in which heinous crimes were proved," the president said. "Nor have I decided to halt all executions in the federal system."

Clinton asked Reno to report to his successor by the end of April on the fairness of the application of the federal death penalty. The death penalty is supported by both presidential contenders, Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush. Bush has overseen almost 140 executions in Texas since January 1995. An initial study by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder is almost complete, but a more thorough review by the National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the Justice Department, is not expected to be ready before the Clinton administration leaves office Jan. 20.

The last federal execution was carried out in 1963 when Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa for kidnapping and killing a doctor.
 
 

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