Death Penalty Foes Press Clinton

Death penalty opponents seeking to stop the first federal execution since 1963 said Tuesday that they had stepped up their campaign urging President Clinton to block the condemned man’s death by lethal injection next week.

Clinton is considering a clemency petition from Juan Raul Garza, who is scheduled to be executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., next Tuesday on a 1993 conviction for ordering three murders to control a Texas-based marijuana-smuggling organization.

The Citizens for a Moratorium on Federal Executions said in a release Tuesday it delivered to the White House letters signed by the heads of major civil rights organizations, religious leaders and more than 500 law professors calling for a moratorium on federal executions.

“We believe it would be unconscionable for the federal government to carry out executions at a time when nagging questions about the federal death penalty system have been raised but are still unanswered,” the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said in its letter.

Death penalty opponents say minorities are disproportionately targeted for execution in the United States, and that some innocent people are mistakenly executed.

The vast majority of death sentences are imposed by state courts, but 20 people currently await execution on federal charges--14 blacks, four whites, one Asian and Garza, the sole Hispanic.

Clinton in July acknowledged there were questions regarding the “disturbing racial composition” of those convicted. Most of the federal capital convictions also were obtained in only a handful of states.

A Justice Department study in September found racial disparities were present among federal death penalty cases and throughout the U.S. criminal justice system, but Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said she would not support a federal moratorium pending further study.

This week’s letters follow a similar effort last month by a group of prominent Americans urging a federal death penalty moratorium, which is also supported by Amnesty International.

Clinton has not yet reached a decision in the case of Garza, a 44-year-old marijuana trafficker and father of four from Brownsville, Texas.

“The president takes that responsibility very seriously,” White House spokesman Jake Siewert told reporters.

“He promises to look at it very closely and make a judgment on the facts. But we won’t comment on it until we have a final decision,” he added.

Clinton stayed an Aug. 5 execution date for Garza so the condemned man could apply for clemency under new Justice Department guidelines.

The president, as well as his potential successors Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, have been consistent supporters of the death penalty.

Siewert said Clinton was being kept apprised of public views on the case. “But I think, in the end, this is going to be determined based on his analysis of the facts and of the petition and recommendations by his advisors,” he said.

There have been 677 state executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, but there has not been a federal execution since 1963.

Texas has conducted far more executions than any other state--236--since 1982, and Tuesday set a U.S. record for executions in a year by putting to death confessed killer Garry Miller, 33, convicted in the rape and murder of 7-year-old April Marie Wilson in 1988.

The execution in Texas, where Bush is governor, put the state at 38 this year, the most by any state since U.S. authorities began keeping death penalty records in 1930.