There was something truly aggravating about lawyers...

There was something truly aggravating about lawyers for a killer of Timothy McVeigh’s magnitude saying that he seeks a stay of execution to “promote integrity in the criminal justice system.”

Although McVeigh appears to have decided to allow his execution to go forth next week, after U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch denied his request for a stay and the appeals court upheld that ruling, there’s no doubt the criminal justice system--the death penalty system in particular--could use a big dose of integrity.

While McVeigh lacks the individual qualifications to promote that integrity, his case has become a major example of what is wrong with the death penalty. The FBI has demonstrated that big mistakes can be made in capital cases. Beyond McVeigh, the next scheduled federal execution provides a clear lesson why capital punishment is wrong, even when the system works like it usually does.

Juan Raul Garza’s death date is June 19, eight days after McVeigh’s. If McVeigh represents exceptional blunders in the system, Garza is the face of the commonplace. His profile reflects the everyday racial and geographic disparities that make the system so unjust. That bias is one reason attorneys have asked President Bush to grant clemency to Garza, a dope-dealing killer.

The disparities were outlined in a Justice Department survey released in September. That study shows U.S. attorneys from just three of 94 federal jurisdictions accounted for almost one-fourth of recommendations to the attorney general to seek the death penalty from 1995 to 2000. Furthermore, like Garza, 85% of the convicts in the federal lethal injection queue are minorities. Almost 30% of those inmates, including Garza, were convicted in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a private interest group.

Garza was scheduled to die in December, but former President Clinton postponed the execution after a broad coalition urged him to impose a moratorium on the federal death penalty. Clinton didn’t go that far, but he did grant a reprieve. While doing so, he ordered additional capital punishment research, saying: “The examination of possible racial and regional bias should be completed before the United States goes forward with an execution. . . . In this area there is no room for error.”

Thanks to the McVeigh case, the likelihood of error is more evident now than ever. The disparities noted in the September report have not been corrected. The Citizens for a Moratorium on Federal Executions, the coalition that pressed Clinton to declare a moratorium, now wants Bush to halt all federal executions because their “reliability, fairness and equality” cannot be guaranteed.

Yet, despite the department’s own figures, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Wednesday told Congress there is no bias in the system and no need for a moratorium. He argued that minorities are less likely to face death after being charged. Repeated studies have demonstrated, however, that in federal capital offenses and throughout the criminal justice system, blacks and Latinos are charged more severely for similar crimes. Justice Department statistics show, for example, that white defendants are twice as likely to get plea agreements from federal prosecutors.

That McVeigh and Garza are guilty of heinous crimes is not reason enough to proceed when their cases indicate something is very wrong with capital punishment. There have been no federal executions in 38 years, and there should be none as long as mistakes and racial and geographic bias infect the system with unfairness.

Yet, even if the unfairness is eliminated, McVeigh’s case demonstrates why a moratorium should not end. Despite a multimillion-dollar defense to protect McVeigh’s rights, despite a crack prosecution and law-enforcement team, 46 of 56 FBI offices failed to turn over 4,449 documents to his defense. If mistakes of that degree can be found just days before McVeigh’s scheduled death, then mistakes in another case certainly could be found just days after death.

If the FBI fiasco is not reason enough for Bush to impose a moratorium, then the bias in the system should be. This time, mistakes may have only delayed a guilty man’s execution. Next time, errors could kill the innocent. All of the time, we have a system that reeks with disparities.