Clinton Gets Pleas to Spare Dope-Dealing Texas Killer
Sonya Ross

San Antonio Express-News
December 7, 2000

WASHINGTON - Flooded by pleas for and against the execution of Juan Raul Garza, the White House said Wednesday that President Clinton is seeking a way to address geographic disparities in federal death sentences that the Garza case helped raise.

Clinton, a supporter of capital punishment, is awaiting a Justice Department review of why some regions impose the death penalty more than others as he seeks to make a decision in the Garza case, White House spokesman Jake Siewert said.

"As a supporter of capital punishment, he believes he has a special obligation to ensure that it's administered fairly and effectively in the federal system," Siewert said. "We're going to look at that individual case. And at the same time, we've asked the Department of Justice to take a broader look at the geographic disparities and what can be done to remedy that."

Clinton has been inundated with requests to spare Garza, a marijuana-ring boss convicted in Texas of three murders in 1990 and 1991. Garza asked Clinton in September to commute his sentence to life in prison because of "long-standing racial bias" in capital punishment sentencing.

If his Dec. 12 lethal injection isn't blocked, Garza would become the first federal death row inmate to be executed in 37 years. Should he choose to intercede on Garza's behalf, Clinton could issue a moratorium on the death penalty, as many have asked, postpone Garza's execution indefinitely, or commute the sentence. But Clinton also could decline to interfere and let the execution proceed as scheduled.

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., sent a letter asking Clinton to do just that, saying he must send a message that the United States "will not hesitate to use capital punishment" to rid itself of violent, murderous drug traffickers. "If Mr. Garza receives clemency because of political pressure, it will detract severely from the moral authority on which the state must draw in employing capital punishment," Barr wrote. "Mr. Garza should be put to death because he is guilty of murder and drug trafficking in violation of federal law, and for no other reason."

Meanwhile, a group of prominent death penalty opponents prepared a full-page newspaper ad, scheduled to appear in today's New York Times, that urged Clinton to use the Garza case as the vehicle for a federal moratorium on capital punishment.

They cited a Justice Department finding that blacks and Hispanics made up 70 percent of those receiving federal death sentences, and roughly half of those sentences are from only a handful of states. "The life of Mexican-American and Texas resident Juan Raul Garza hangs in the balance. So does your legacy as the president who has inspired a national conversation on racial bias and racial healing," the ad read.

"Answers are needed before Juan Raul Garza or any federal prisoner is put to death." Signatories included two members of Clinton's race advisory board, attorney Angela Oh and historian John Hope Franklin.

Others included entertainer Harry Belafonte; veteran civil rights activists Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lowery, the Rev. C.T. Vivian and Andrew Young; labor leaders Dolores Huerta and Arturo Rodriguez; Rick Dovalina, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens; NAACP president Kweisi Mfume; Japanese-American activist Fred Korematsu; and Hugh Price, president of the National Urban League.
 

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