dictionary

Juan Raul Garza is scheduled to be executed Tuesday at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana

TERRE HAUTE, Indiana -- Housed in a stark, death-chamber cell, convicted killer Juan Raul Garza awaited word Monday on whether his life would be spared.

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning rejected one of Garza's requests for a stay of execution. A second request is pending.

Garza was moved at 11 p.m. Sunday to the 9-by-14-foot holding cell, the same room where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh spent his final day before his execution last Monday, prison officials said.

IN-DEPTH • Justice Profiles • Supreme Court Home Page

LEGAL RESOURCES   FindLaw Supreme Court Center   • Court History   • The Justices   • Landmark Decisions FindLaw opinion database: Supreme Court opinions from 1893-2002 Search by party: Search by full-text:

Garza, 44, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 a.m. (8 a.m. EDT) Tuesday in what would be the second federal execution since 1963.

Garza, a confessed drug trafficker, was sentenced to death in August 1993 in Texas for murdering or ordering the murders of three other drug traffickers in an attempt to gain further control of distribution networks. He was sentenced to death for each of the murders under a federal "drug kingpin" statute.

Garza, who has two children ages 9 and 12, has ratcheted up his pleas for leniency as the execution date has neared, with his attorneys seeking clemency from President Bush and filing a series of court appeals to spare his life.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said there is no reason to spare Garza's life. He said Garza was responsible for the three deaths and five others -- murders in Mexico for which he was never prosecuted.

Ashcroft also said there was no racial bias in the case, emphasizing the prosecutor was Hispanic, as were seven of the eight victims. Born in Brownsville, Texas, Garza is Hispanic and a U.S. citizen.

BIOGRAPHY Who is Juan Raul Garza?     ALSO The federal drug kingpin law

"I do not believe there is any reason to further delay his execution," Ashcroft said. "His execution and the Department of Justice's ongoing efforts to review how death penalty cases are brought in the federal system serve the same goal: the preservation and protection of the public's confidence in our system of justice."(Read full statement)

Bureau of Prison officials at the U.S. Penitentiary said they were moving ahead with plans for the execution. Garza is in the cell adjacent to the execution chamber, where he is scheduled to be strapped to a gurney Tuesday morning and injected with three chemicals.

The holding cell is equipped with a bed, reading area, shower and toilet and is slightly bigger than the cell where Garza has spent most of his time at the penitentiary, officials said.

The officials would not say what Garza requested as a last meal.

In the rejected petition to the Supreme Court, Garza's attorneys had argued the jury was improperly instructed on the alternative of sentencing him to life without parole. In a case decided earlier this term, Shafer v. South Carolina, the Supreme Court ruled juries must be clearly apprised of sentencing alternatives.

The court did not act on a second appeal that contends the human rights provisions of the Organization of American States charter was violated when evidence was introduced alleging Garza was linked to four murders in Mexico for which he had never been charged.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in a letter to the U.S. State Department, has urged Bush to halt the execution.

Garza has also petitioned Bush for clemency. The clemency petition is largely based on the claim that the federal death penalty is biased against minorities.

The White House is expected to formally reject Garza's clemency bid, but may wait until after the Supreme Court acts on the appeals.

In addition to the murder charges, Garza was convicted of importing thousands of pounds of marijuana from Mexico, then reselling it from stash houses in Brownsville and Corpus Christi to dealers in Texas, Louisiana and Michigan.

He is not challenging his convictions and sentences for the drug possession, intent to distribute and money laundering charges, which do not carry the death sentence.