Stop Federal Executions, Don't Just Postpone One
Newsday - Editorial

December 11, 2000

President Bill Clinton has decided to temporarily spare the life of Texas marijuana dealer and murderer Juan Raul Garza, who otherwise, next Tuesday, would have become the first person executed by the federal government in 37 years.

Postponing Garza's date with a poison- filled syringe was the least Clinton could have done. Given the serious unresolved questions of racial and geographic disparities in the government's application of the ultimate penalty, he should have imposed an indefinite moratorium on all federal executions.

Garza is not a sympathetic figure. He could be a poster boy for the federal drug kingpin law. Enacted in 1988, the law authorizes the death penalty for large-scale narcotics traffickers who kill in the course of doing their business. Garza confessed in Texas to three drug-related homicides.

This editorial page is opposed to capital punishment for many very good reasons: Its application is fraught with error. It is barbarous. It is arbitrary. It is not a deterrent. It is expensive to administer. It is reserved almost exclusively for the poor. As Garza argued in his clemency request, it is applied in a racially discriminatory manner. And, as federal officials have acknowledged, the bulk of federal death sentences are meted out in a handful of states.

The last two reasons-racial and geographic disparities-raise real constitutional questions. They cut to the core of the nation's ideal of equal justice under law. Seventy-five percent of those convicted in federal courts of participating in drug enterprises have been white, 24 percent minority. But of those chosen for death-penalty prosecutions, 88 percent were black or Hispanic. Sixteen of the 20 people under federal death sentences are minorities. That's what prompted the Justice Department's ongoing review of its procedures.

A moratorium is in order, not to benefit Garza and his ilk, but to preserve America's ideals.
 
 
 

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