Group Calls for a Moratorium on Federal Executions

President Clinton was urged Tuesday by a group of prominent Americans--including Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and Clinton’s former White House counsel, Lloyd Cutler--to declare a moratorium on federal executions.

The halt would last until the Justice Department completes a study on whether the government is administering the death penalty fairly.

The newly formed Citizens for a Moratorium on Federal Executions made the request just three weeks before convicted murderer Juan R. Garza of Texas is scheduled to be put to death in what would be the first federal execution since 1963.

“Unless you take action, executions will begin at a time when your own attorney general has expressed concern about racial and other disparities in the federal death penalty process,” members of the group wrote in a four-page letter.

Among the authors are three Democratic former U.S. senators, Alan Cranston of California, Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and Paul Simon of Illinois; three Roman Catholic bishops, Joseph A. Fiorenza of Houston, Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit and Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles; former California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp; entrepreneur and philanthropist George Soros; and Bud Welch, an Oklahoma City gas station owner whose daughter was killed in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.

The moratorium group urged Clinton “to prevent an unconscionable act--executing individuals while the government is still determining whether gross unfairness has led to their death sentences.”

The letter repeatedly cited a September study by the Justice Department, which found racial disparities in its decisions on death penalty prosecutions. In cases in which Atty. Gen. Janet Reno authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, 69% of defendants have been Latino or African American, while only 25% have been white.

Those preliminary findings also showed significant geographic disparities in the administration of the federal death penalty. A small group of U.S. attorneys in a few states accounts for about 40% of the death penalty cases.

Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert said the White House had received the letter. He said Clinton was troubled by “the disparities” in the Justice Department report and noted that the department’s review was continuing.

Siewert reiterated earlier Clinton comments that supporters of the death penalty, of whom the president is one, had an obligation to make sure it is administered fairly. Siewert declined comment on the pending clemency request of Garza, who is scheduled to be executed Dec. 12.

Cutler, who served both Clinton and Jimmy Carter in the White House, said in an interview that for some years he has supported the death penalty in certain circumstances because he believes it has a deterrent effect. The influential Washington attorney said, however, that he decided to play a role in the moratorium effort because of “the disproportionately large number of blacks and Latinos” who were facing federal capital prosecutions.

Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of 40 books, said Tuesday that he was pleased to join the effort because he is categorically opposed to capital punishment. “I don’t believe we should be a servant of death,” he said.

Van de Kamp said that although he had long been philosophically opposed to capital punishment, he had, as Los Angeles County district attorney and California attorney general, “carefully” supervised death penalty prosecutions and appeals, consistent with his duty under California law. He said, however, that the Justice Department’s preliminary study showed clearly that “there is a lot of work to be done” to ensure that the federal law is being administered fairly.

The Houston attorney who represents Garza said he was encouraged by the call for a moratorium. “Juan Garza’s case epitomizes the problems that the study revealed: He is Hispanic and he was tried in Texas,” said Greg Wiercioch, referring to the fact that a disproportionate number of federal death penalty cases are in Texas.

A third of the 38 people who signed the letter are Southern Californians. In addition to Cranston, Mahony and Van de Kamp, they include attorney Angela Oh; former Los Angeles Police Commission President Stanley Sheinbaum; television producer Norman Lear; actor Jack Lemmon; singer Barbra Streisand; civil rights leaders Antonia Hernandez, James Lawson and Mario Obledo; United Farm Workers union president Arturo Rodriguez; former MCA President Sidney Sheinberg; and retired federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin, the jurist who in 1985 freed Rubin “Hurricane” Carter from prison.