TEXAS KINGPIN OVERSHADOWED BY MCVEIGH

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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- At the same prison where Timothy McVeigh awaits
his fate is a lesser-known figure who faces execution June 19 in a
case that could have a far greater effect on the future of the federal
death penalty.

Juan Raul Garza, 44, was convicted of running a marijuana smuggling
operation, killing a man, and ordering the slayings of two others he
thought were informants.

The Texas drug kingpin narrowly escaped the death chamber in December
amid concerns that the federal death penalty is racially or
geographically biased. President Clinton ordered the Justice
Department to review the government's use of capital punishment.

Now, just weeks away from Garza's lethal injection, there has been no
word from the department, and officials there will not comment on
whether the review will be completed in time.

McVeigh's execution for the Oklahoma City bombing is set for Monday,
though his attorneys are seeking a stay based on newly revealed FBI
documents withheld during the trial. If McVeigh's execution is
delayed, Garza would be the first federal prisoner put to death since
1963.

Garza's attorneys have filed a plea for clemency, citing cases
involving similar crimes, including the murder case of a mob hit man
in New York, where federal prosecutors never pursued the death penalty.

"I think what we're hoping we can accomplish with Juan Garza's case is
to just somehow be heard above all of this sound and fury and white
noise that's surrounding the McVeigh case," defense attorney Gregory
Wiercioch said. "That case is really overshadowing some serious
systemic problems with the federal death penalty system."

Among those problems, Wiercioch and other death penalty opponents say,
is Garza's ethnicity: Garza, who is Hispanic, is one of 17 minorities
out of the 20 men on federal death row.

Another factor is that Garza was sentenced to death in Texas, which
has sent more men to federal death row than any other state. Texas and
Virginia account for half the 20 inmates on federal death row, leading
critics to say capital punishment is not sought consistently from
state to state.

Garza's attorneys have cited 27 cases involving crimes similar to
Garza's in which the federal death penalty was not sought or a plea
bargain was accepted.

"It's not a case where he's claiming innocence on the underlying
evidence," said Bruce Gilchrist, another of Garza's attorneys. "At the
same time, there's every reason to believe that if he wasn't Hispanic
and hadn't committed his crimes in Texas, but was from a white crime
family in New York or New Jersey, he wouldn't be on death row today."

A Justice Department study released last year showed that between 1995
and July 2000, nine of the 94 U.S. attorney districts accounted for
nearly half the 183 defendants recommended for the death penalty. They
were Puerto Rico, the eastern district of Virginia, Maryland, the
eastern and southern districts of New York, western Missouri, New
Mexico, western Tennessee, and northern Texas. Forty districts never
recommended the death penalty.

Robert Litt, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton
Justice Department, said there is "a question of whether the way the
system is set up produces arbitrary and discriminatory results."

"I don't understand what the rush is to execute somebody before you
get answers to these questions," said Litt, who is now part of the
group Citizens for a Moratorium on Federal Executions. "Garza's not
going anywhere."

Justice Department officials have refused to comment on allegations
that Garza's case has been shaped by race or geography.

The son of migrant farm workers, Garza set up a marijuana ring in the
Texas border city of Brownsville in the early 1980s. Through 1992,
Garza's operation moved tons of pot from Mexico into the United States.

Prosecutors characterized him as a ruthless man who considered murder
a way of doing business. When one employee crossed Garza, he was
driven onto a farm road, where Garza shot him in the back of the head,
dumped his body in the brush, then shot him four more times.

"He's about as violent as anybody I've seen," said Mark Patterson, the
chief federal prosecutor at Garza's trial.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela said he does not accept
claims of racial bias in Garza's case. "In this particular case, the
judge was Hispanic, the defendant was Hispanic, a majority of the
jurors were Hispanic, and the victims were Hispanic," he said.

Garza was one of the first people convicted under the newly reinstated
federal death penalty in 1988. Prosecutors were given narrow
guidelines under which they could seek the death penalty against drug
kingpins convicted of murder.

"I think the government was looking for someone that they thought
would fit the bill," said Philip Hilder, Garza's attorney during his
trial. "I think they accentuated Juan's activities and his stature in
order for them to fit this profile that they had."