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Texas Defender Service
412 Main, Suite 1150, Houston, Texas 77002
FOR RELEASE: December 20, 1999 CONTACT: Greg Wiercioch. Esq.
FIRST FEDERAL EXECUTION
IN OVER 36 YEARS
CHALLENGED
IN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL
Defendant Will Also Petition President Clinton for Clemency
Appeals are nearly exhausted for the first federal prisoner to face execution in over 36 years. Juan Raul Garza, 43, has been moved to the new federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he faces the prospect of being the first person ever put to death in the federal lethal injection chamber.
Mr. Garza, however, is challenging his death sentence in a complaint about to be filed with the lnter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. He has raised the claim that the U.S. Government violated his rights under international law by introducing evidence at the sentencing phase of his trial that he committed other unsolved murders in Mexico, for which he was never prosecuted or convicted. The only evidence that tied Mr. Garza to the alleged murders in Mexico came from co-defendants who received leniency from the Government in exchange for their testimony against him.
No case in the history of the modern era of capital punishrnent since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, has involved the use of unsolved, unadjudicated offenses from a foreign country as an aggravating factor at the punishment phase of any state or federal capital murder trial. Because of differences in the laws in Mexico and the U.S., Mr. Garza was unable to effectively investigate these allegations and challenge the reliability of the evidence that ultimately led to his death sentence.
Mr. Garza was convicted in 1993 under the federal drug kingpin statute for murders committed as part of a marijuana smuggling and distribution ring based in Brownsville, Texas. Last month, the United States Supreme Court refused to review his case, usually the last step in the appeals process before an execution date is set. The execution date must be announced at least 60 days in advance of the execution by the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The only other possibility remaining for a reprieve is an application for executive clemency to President Clinton asking him to commute Mr. Garza's death sentence to life without the possibility of release. A clemency petition is being prepared and will be presented to the President early next year.
One basis for clemency is that the capital case protocols implemented by The Department of Justice for deciding when to seek the death penalty were not in place at the time of Mr. Garza's trial. Since 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno has refused to authorize a death penalty prosecution in over two-thirds of the eases she has reviewed. 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 potentially death-eligible cases. However, a comparison of Mr. Garza's case with others in which the death penalty was not authorized is difficult, because the Justice Department has not made public its recommendations in individual cases.
Mr. Garza's attorney, Greg Wiercioch of Houston, said, "If the United States carries out this execution, it will mark a major expansion of the death penalty at a time when the world community is calling for its limitation and, ultimately its abolition. Particularly where there are issues of international due process and fairness, it would violate America's stated commitment to human rights to rely on such controversial evidence as the basis for the first Federal execution in nearly 40 years."
No federal prisoner has been executed since February 15, 1963, when Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa for the kidnapping and murder of a doctor.
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