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| Justice Dept Opposes Execution Stay for Garza |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 06/15/2001 |
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The U.S. Justice Department urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject a request for a stay of execution by drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza, who is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection next Tuesday. Garza, who appealed to the Supreme Court, would be the second federal inmate executed at a new federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on Monday became the first federal inmate put to death in 38 years. Garza's lawyers claimed in the appeal that the sentencing jury should have been instructed that the only alternative to a death sentence was life in prison without possible parole. In opposing a stay of execution, the Justice Department said Garza's claim had been previously rejected by a U.S. appeals court and by the Supreme Court on direct review. Garza was convicted in federal court in Texas of one murder and of ordering two other deaths in 1990 and 1991. Garza, 44, who was born in Mexico but is an American citizen, has admitted to the drug-related killings. Besides the appeal to the Supreme Court and a separate one pending before a U.S. appeals court in Chicago, Garza's attorneys have asked President Bush to commute his sentence to life in prison without a chance for parole. |
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