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

TERRE HAUTE, Indiana -- Convicted of three murders, Juan Raul Garza was being prepared Tuesday for his execution at 8 a.m. EDT.

Spokesman Jim Cross said Garza had spent the last few hours watching television, talking with staff, seeing the prison chaplain and speaking to his spiritual adviser.

Cross would not release the name of the witnesses Garza had requested to watch his execution by lethal injection.

His final requested meal consisted of steak, french fries, onion rings, diet cola and three slices of bread, The Associated Press reported.

President George W. Bush denied clemency Monday evening for the convicted drug kingpin. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush found "no grounds" to spare Garza's life, clearing the way for the second federal execution in eight days.

VIDEO CNN's Charles Bierbauer reports on convicted killer Juan Garza's futile attempts to overturn his death sentence (June 18) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Garza, 44, is scheduled to die in the same death chamber in which Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed last week. Before this month, no federal prisoner had been executed since 1963.

White House Counsel Al Gonzales spoke to Garza's attorneys Monday afternoon after the Supreme Court denied a stay of the execution and, after being told they planned no additional legal appeals, Gonzales told the attorneys that Bush had decided earlier in the day to reject the clemency request.

The White House delayed a public announcement to give Garza's attorneys time to inform their client of the president's decision. The court rejected Garza's claims that prosecutors had violated human rights provisions of the Organization of American States charter by introducing evidence alleging Garza was linked to four murders in Mexico for which he had never been charged.

Earlier Monday, the justices rejected a separate argument that Garza's 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.

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 request for clemency was largely based on the claim that the federal death penalty is biased against minorities. But Attorney General John Ashcroft said there was 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.

"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."

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. It is the same cell where McVeigh spent his final hours before his execution last week.

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.