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Juan Raul Garza
Execution Scheduled for June 19th
May 31, 2001 Update
May 21, 2001 Update
May 12, 2001 Update
December 7, 2000 Update
Case Summary
Mr. Garza was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 under the federal drug
kingpin statute for the murders of Thomas Albert Rumbo, Gilberto Matos and
Erasmo de la Fuente, committed as part of a marijuana smuggling and distribution
ring based in Brownsville, Texas. On November 15, 1999, the United States
Supreme Court refused to review his case, usually the final step in the death
penalty appeals process. Garza is expected to be killed at 7am on June 19, 2001.
At the sentencing phase of the trial, the Government introduced evidence that
Mr. Garza had committed four additional murders in Mexico, for which he was
never arrested, prosecuted, or convicted. Although the Mexican authorities were
unable to solve any of the murders, the U.S. Government sent Customs agents to
Mexico to re-investigate these closed cases. At the trial, the prosecution
offered no physical evidence tying Mr. Garza to the crimes. The only evidence
linking him to the murders was the testimony of three accomplices who received
substantially reduced sentences from the Government in exchange for their
testimony implicating Mr. Garza. No state of federal death sentence in the
history of the modern era of capital punishment—since 1976, when the death
penalty was reinstated—has relied upon offenses from a foreign country for
which the defendant was never prosecuted or convicted. On appeal, Mr. Garza
unsuccessfully argued that differences in the laws between Mexico and the United
States prevented him from challenging the reliability of the evidence of the
four murders in Mexico that ultimately led to his death sentence.
Complaint Filed with International Court Late last year, a complaint was
filed on Mr. Garza’s behalf with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
in Washington, D.C. The complaint states that the U.S. Government violated Mr.
Garza’s rights under international law by introducing at the sentencing phase
of his trial four unsolved murders in Mexico, for which Mr. Garza was never
arrested, prosecuted, convicted, or sentenced. No state or federal death
sentence in the history of the modern era of capital punishment has relied upon
offenses from a foreign country for which the defendant was never prosecuted or
convicted. On January 27, 2000, the Inter-American Commission issued
precautionary measures, asking “that the United States of America take all
necessary steps to preserve Mr. Garza’s life and physical integrity so as not
to hinder the processing of the case before the Inter-American system.” In
April, the European Parliament passed a resolution “urg[ing] the U.S.
Government to comply with the request made by the Inter-American Commission…that
the execution should not proceed before the Commission has examined and ruled on
the case.” On three occasions, the Commission has asked the United States to
respond to the complaint. The Government has failed to respond, even though it
has repeatedly recognized the important role that the Commission plays in the
protection of human rights. It is unlikely that the Commission will have
completed its review of the complaint before Mr. Garza’s scheduled execution.
Government’s Arbitrary Decision to Seek Death The procedures that the Justice
Department currently use for deciding when to seek the death penalty were not in
place at the time of Mr. Garza’s trial. Since 1995, U.S. Attorney General
Janet Reno has refused to authorize the death penalty in over two-thirds of the
cases she has reviewed, including cases, like Mr. Garza’s, involving multiple
murders. The absence of these protocols at the time of Mr. Garza’s case raises
serious concerns about the consistency of the Government’s decision-making
process to pursue capital punishment in potential death penalty cases. In 1994,
Ms. Reno stated, in response to concerns about potential bias in the
administration of capital punishment, that the Department of Justice would
create “an appropriate mechanism for post-trial disclosure of the Department’s
capital prosecution decisions, so that the public can review and understand the
basis for such decisions.” Six years later, despite Ms. Reno’s promise, the
Justice Department has not disclosed its capital prosecution decisions to the
public. The Department of Justice recently denied Mr. Garza’s request for
these records under the Freedom of Information Act. Without the capital
prosecution decisions, a comparison of Mr. Garza’s case with others in which
the death penalty was not authorized is impossible. An administrative appeal of
the Government’s denial of the requested information is currently pending.
However, Mr. Garza’s lawyers cannot initiate a FOIA lawsuit in federal
district court until the Department of Justice rules on the appeal. It is
unlikely that such a lawsuit would be completed before the date of Mr. Garza’s
execution. Race and the Death Penalty On February 10, 2000, the Department of
Justice announced that it was conducting a study to determine whether
inappropriate racial disparities exist within the federal death penalty system.
On June 14, 2000, Vice President Al Gore said that “the question of racial
disparity is right now being investigated thoroughly within the Justice
Department. And I await the findings that they have.” The findings of the
study are available at <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/feddp.html>. The
statistical information currently available to the public confirms that race
plays an unacceptable role in determining who is selected for federal death
penalty prosecution. A 1994 staff report by the House Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights found that, in cases where the Government decided to seek
capital punishment, 89% of the defendants were either African-American or
Latino. More recent statistics show little improvement. Of the 133 defendants
authorized for death penalty prosecution from 1988 to 1998, 76% were members of
racial minorities. Last Hope Lies with Clemency Petition to President-Select
Bush Because it is unlikely that the United States will abide by an
international tribunal’s decision to stay Mr. Garza’s execution, the only
real hope lies with an application for executive clemency to President-Select
Bush. A clemency petition will has been filed. You can help by writing directly
to the Bush White House — acknowledging the serious nature of the crimes for
which Mr. Garza has been convicted, expressing sympathy for the victims’
relatives and friends, asking Mr. Bush to impose a moratorium on federal
executions and order a review of the process for determining which cases the
Government will seek capital punishment, and, finally, urging Bush to spare Mr.
Garza’s life by commuting his death sentence to life in prison without the
possibility of release.
December 7th, 2000
The following was released December 7th, 2000 by the White House:
STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT CLINTON
Granting a Six-Month Reprieve to Federal Inmate Juan Rual Garza Today I have
decided to stay the execution of Juan Raul Garza, an inmate on federal death
row, for 6 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. I believe that the death
penalty is appropriate for the most heinous crimes. As President, I have signed
federal legislation that authorizes it under certain circumstances. It is
clearly, however, an issue of the most serious weight. The penalty of death, as
Justice Potter Stewart and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have reminded us, is
"qualitatively different" from other punishments we impose. 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. As I have said before, supporters of capital
punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this
irreversible punishment. Further, Article II of the Constitution vests in the
President the sole authority to grant pardons and reprieves for federal crimes.
Therefore, I have approached this matter with great deliberation. This Fall, the
Department of Justice released the results of a statistical survey of the
federal death penalty. It found that minority defendants, and certain geographic
districts, are disproportionately represented in federal death penalty
prosecutions. As the Deputy Attorney General said at the time the survey was
released, no one confronted with those statistics can help but be troubled by
those disparities. We do not, however, fully understand what lies behind those
statistics. The Attorney General has said that more information and a broader
analysis are needed to better interpret the data we now have and to determine
whether the disparities that are evident reflect any bias in our system. She has
undertaken an effort to gather and analyze the relevant information, so than an
appropriate decision can be made on the question of bias. After a close and
careful review of this issue, and after conferring with the Attorney General and
the Deputy Attorney General, I am not satisfied that, given the uncertainty that
exists, it is appropriate to go forward with an execution in a case that may
implicate the very issues at the center of that uncertainty. 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. I have asked that the Attorney General report to the
President by the end of April 2001 on the Justice Department's analysis of the
racial and geographic disparities in federal death penalty prosecutions.
May 12th Update
Source: Houston Chronicle
The lawyer for a Texas drug kingpin urged the Justice Department Friday to delay
his client's execution in light of the FBI's admission that it withheld
documents during the trial of the Oklahoma City bomber. Juan Raul Garza, 44, was
convicted in 1993 of ordering 3 murders to further control a South Texas
drug-smuggling ring with distribution networks in Houston, Louisiana and
Michigan. The Brownsville native is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June
19. Garza's federal death penalty trial was the first ever in the Southern
District of Texas, which is based in Houston. Garza, on death row in Terre
Haute, Ind., also is the only Hispanic ever sentenced to die by a federal court.
John Howley, an attorney with a New York law firm representing Garza, said the
FBI's failure to turn over thousands of documents to convicted bomber Timothy
McVeigh's defense team raises the question of whether other death penalty cases
have been mishandled by the federal government. "This raises serious
questions about the fairness of the system," Howley said, "and it
raises questions about whether federal and state prosecutors around the country
are complying with their obligations to turn over evidence." U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft delayed next week's execution of McVeigh until June 11. He
ordered an investigation into the FBI's failure to turn over thousands of
documents to McVeigh's defense team. McVeigh, 33, was sentenced to death in June
1997 for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds of others. In the Garza case,
Houston defense attorney Douglas C. McNabb, who represented Garza in the trial
and appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said federal prosecutors could
have withheld evidence that they are required by law to share with the defense
team. Justice Department officials were unavailable for comment. McNabb recalled
that federal prosecutors were reluctant to share the voluminous evidence they
claimed to have collected on Garza. "We eventually got quite a bit of
information," he said. "But did we get everything? I don't know. Could
the government have withheld information? They certainly could have." The
complex investigation into the marijuana ring was headed by the U.S. Customs
Service, but McNabb said it involved numerous law enforcement agencies,
including the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "If you have a
set of rules, then you have to play by the set of rules," McNabb said.
"I would call upon the Customs Service to check all of their files and turn
over any evidence that they have that they didn't turn over and should
have." McNabb no longer represents Garza, but he said he still has an
emotional interest in the case. He and Howley believe a moratorium should be
placed on federal executions. Statistics at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Web
site show 20 inmates on death row. If Garza's request is granted, it would be
the third execution postponement for the death row inmate. Last year, President
Clinton postponed Garza's execution to give the Justice Department time to
finish studying the racial and geographic disparities in federal death penalty
cases. The study has not been released. The last federal execution was in 1963.
Convicted kidnapper Victor Feguer was put to death by hanging at the Iowa State
Penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa. Garza, a high school dropout and son of
migrant farm workers, had a prosperous construction company in Brownsville. He
and his wife, the daughter of one of the town's most respected pastors, had 4
children. Yet, he was a feared drug lord who made millions by moving tons of
marijuana from Mexico to South Texas from 1982 to 1992. Testimony from the trial
claims that Garza was so ruthless that he allegedly had his son-in-law, Bernabe
Sosa, killed in Mexico. He blamed Sosa for the loss of a marijuana delivery in a
Houston drug bust. In an appeal for clemency, Garza acknowledged his guilt in
the murders committed in the United States but argued that his sentence should
be reduced to life in prison. Garza's lawyers complain that the jury was allowed
to hear testimony of alleged crimes in Mexico although he was never charged with
committing those crimes.
May 21st Update
Lawyers for Juan Raul Garza, the Texan scheduled for execution by the federal
government on June 19, are asking President Bush to commute his death sentence
in light of continuing questions regarding the fairness of capital punishment.
In documents to be filed Monday with the White House and the Justice Department,
the attorneys cite a Justice Department study last fall that found persistent
racial and geographic disparities in the application of the federal death
penalty. Nearly 70 % of defendants in federal death penalty-eligible cases are
black or Hispanic, the study found, with fewer than 1/3 of the states accounting
for more than half of the government's capital prosecutions. The 24-page filing
supplements the clemency petition made last year when President Clinton was in
office. While not ruling on that petition, which requested commutation to life
without the possibility of parole, Mr. Clinton stepped in 5 days before Mr.
Garza's scheduled Dec. 12 execution and granted a 6-month reprieve. That
decision, he said, was to give the government time to gather and analyze more
information on the disparities uncovered in the initial Justice study released
in September. The Justice Department has yet to reveal the findings of its
follow-up review, in which federal prosecutors were asked to provide more
information about their decisions regarding the death penalty. And a separate
study to be performed by the National Institute of Justice has yet to begin,
Garza defenders said. "The same disparities and concerns, therefore, that
provided the basis for a reprieve for Mr. Garza in December 2000 exist,
unameliorated today," they wrote. "It would be unconscionable to
execute Mr. Garza now, when grave doubt exists as to whether or not his
ethnicity and state of prosecution played a role in the government's decision to
seek the death penalty in his case." In every instance from 1988 to 1994 in
which the federal death penalty was considered or sought in Texas, the defendant
was Hispanic, the petition says, calling the disparities "the ultimate form
of racial profiling." Mr. Garza, a Brownsville marijuana trafficker, was
sentenced to death in 1993 for the murders of 3 associates. He has acknowledged
responsibility for the crimes. Seeking to prove that decisions to pursue the
death penalty are not uniformly applied, the Garza legal team included with its
petition a summary of two dozen cases in which they argue the crimes were more
heinous than their client's. In none of them was capital punishment pursued.
Justice Department and White House officials generally don't discuss the
specifics of pending clemency petitions and couldn't be reached for comment
Sunday. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who told senators during his
confirmation hearings that he was troubled by the evidence of racial disparity
uncovered in the Justice study, has said he knew of no reason to halt the Garza
execution. Mr. Bush, whose home state has been the nation's most active
executioner, also has voiced no uncertainty about the application of the death
penalty. Texas executed 152 people during his tenure as governor. Bruce
Gilchrist, one of Mr. Garza's attorneys, said that while the legal team was
"disheartened" by the attorney general's recent statement on the case,
"we are encouraged by the statements that were made by Mr. Ashcroft during
his confirmation hearing." He said he also took a measure of hope from the
statements the attorney general made recently, in postponing the execution of
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, about ensuring the fairness of the
process. "One thing we hope to do through this clemency petition is show
not every person on death row is a carbon copy of Tim McVeigh," said
another Garza lawyer, Greg Wiercioch of Houston. "Unlike Timothy McVeigh,
70 % of the men on death row are black and Hispanic." In their clemency
filing Monday, Mr. Garza's lawyers said they also plan to cite 2 other
developments: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' finding that the
execution would violate Mr. Garza's human rights under U.S. international treaty
obligations because prosecutors at sentencing introduced evidence of murders
committed in Mexico for which he never was tried or convicted. "The failure
of the United States to act in response to the commission's recommendation could
severely damage the integrity and authority of the [Organization of American
States] and the commission in issuing future reports finding violations of
international law by member states," the petition states. A recent Supreme
Court ruling that suggests jurors in the Garza case were entitled to know that
he would have been sentenced to life without possibility of parole if they did
not impose a death sentence. "The prosecution in Mr. Garza's case
repeatedly and inaccurately told the jury that Mr. Garza could be released from
prison in as little as 20 years if he were not sentenced to death," the
filing says. Among the 21 men on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr.
Garza's case was the only one in which the jury was denied accurate information
about the federal sentencing guidelines, his lawyers contend.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
May 31st Update
An appeals court on Wednesday denied a federal death row inmate's motion to have
his sentence voided or his execution delayed. Juan Raul Garza, 44, is set to die
June 19. He could be the 1st federal prisoner executed since 1963. Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to die June 11, but could seek to delay his
execution because of the recent release of FBI documents that weren't turned
over to defense attorneys during his trial. Garza was convicted of running a
marijuana smuggling operation, killing one man, and ordering the slayings of 2
others he thought were informants. His attorneys asked the 5th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in New Orleans to vacate the death sentence because jurors were
not told the court would sentence Garza to life without parole if the jury did
not sentence him to death. The attorneys said that violated Garza's right to due
process. A 3-judge panel denied the motion, as well as the motion for a delay.
Garza's attorneys did not return telephone calls for comment Wednesday. Last
week, the attorneys asked President Bush to commute Garza's sentence to life in
prison without a chance for parole. Lawyers for Garza, a Hispanic, say their
client should be granted clemency because it's still an open question whether
the sentence resulted from bias against minorities in federal death penalty
prosecutions. Garza's execution had been postponed by former President Clinton,
who said the government should look at whether racism plays a role in the
federal death penalty system before executing Garza. Garza was convicted in 1993
under a 1988 federal law that imposes a death sentence for murder resulting from
large-scale drug dealing. Prosecutors said he ran a Brownsville, Texas-based
operation that brought tons of pot from Mexico for shipment to Louisiana and
Michigan. Garza has admitted his role in the 3 murders, but has complained that
during the sentencing phase of his case the jury was allowed to hear testimony
about alleged crimes in Mexico that he was never charged with committing.
(source: Associated Press)
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