Clinton delays execution of Texas killer:
President awaits analysis of death penalty's fairness
Michelle Mittelstadt

The Dallas Morning News
Friday, December 8, 2000

Just five days before the first federal execution in 37 years was scheduled to occur, President Clinton intervened Thursday night and granted a six-month reprieve to South Texas drug boss Juan Raul Garza.

The White House said the president decided to delay Mr. Garza's execution because the Justice Department has yet to complete new studies on the fairness of the federal death penalty. "There is work under way at the Justice Department that goes right to the heart of some of the issues raised in this clemency petition, and that work ought to be done before a final decision is made," said White House spokesman Jake Siewert.

The decision came just hours after Mr. Clinton met at the White House with Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy, Eric Holder, to consider the clemency petition filed by Mr. Garza's lawyers.

The Brownsville marijuana trafficker was sentenced to death in 1993 for the murders of three associates. He has acknowledged responsibility for the crimes but asked the president to commute his sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

While noting Mr. Clinton's support for capital punishment, aides in recent days have underlined his concern about disparities in federal death sentencing. A Justice Department analysis issued in September found widespread racial and geographic disparities, with minority defendants involved in 80 percent of death penalty cases. In their clemency petition, Mr. Garza's attorneys said the Justice Department study illustrates a system "grossly biased" against Hispanics and African-Americans.

The president "thinks he has a special obligation, as a supporter of the death penalty, to ensure that it's administered fairly," Mr. Siewert said. "He's spent some time ... thinking about the issues that were raised in the clemency petition, thinking about the broader issue of geographic and racial disparities."

While the attorney general said in September that she was disturbed by the report's findings, she said there is no evidence any of the 20 men on federal death row are there for crimes they didn't commit.

The attorney general in September asked all 93 U.S. attorneys to provide supplementary data on death penalty cases - information that still is rolling in and has not been shared with Mr. Garza's defenders.

"The only thing I can compare it to is some kind of star-chamber proceeding where nobody knows what the evidence is or what the facts are and a decision suddenly comes out of a black box," said Mr. Garza's lawyer, Gregory Wiercioch.

Ms. Reno said Thursday that she would review the new data "to see whether that would be relevant" in Mr. Garza's case.
 
 
 
 

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