Dateline: 06/18/01

Juan Raul Garza, convicted in 1993 for killing three men while leading a South Texas drug ring that smuggled tons of marijuana into the U.S., now awaits death by lethal injection on June 19, 2001 at 8:00 am ET in the same Terre Haute, Indiana federal prison death house used for the execution of Timothy McVeigh. 

While Garza's lawyers filed and lost appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, they did succeed in winning two stays of execution from then President Clinton. The second stay, issued on Dec. 7, 2000, delayed Garza's execution until June 2001.

In a Dec. 7, 2000 press release, President Clinton stated, "Today, I have decided to stay the execution of Juan Raul Garza, an inmate on federal death row for six months until June 2001, to allow the Justice Department time to gather and properly analyze more information about racial and geographic disparities in the federal death penalty system."

Clinton issued the stay after a Justice Department review of Sept. 14, 2000 revealed that 80 percent of federal defendants charged over the previous five years with crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed were minorities.

"In issuing this stay, I have not decided that the death penalty should not be imposed in this case, in which heinous crimes were proved. Nor have I decided to halt all executions in the federal system. I have simply concluded that the examination of possible racial and regional bias should be completed before the United States goes forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very questions raised by the Justice Department's continuing study. In this area there is no room for error," stated President Clinton.

Garza's petition for presidential clemency did not claim his innocence. Instead, Garza's lawyers argued that federal prosecutors had improperly referred to murders in Mexico or which Garza was not charged or prosecuted by Mexican officials.

On June 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee that while he had, "no higher priority than protecting the civil rights of all Americans," a Justice Department review of 950 cases revealed "no evidence of racial bias" in application of the death penalty and that minority defendants were, in fact, less likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants.

Attorney General Ashcroft has since told reporters that "[he knows] of no reason not to proceed with the Garza execution."

With the execution of Timothy McVeigh, Juan Raul Garza became one of 20 federal inmates on death row.