Juan Raul Garza was a Brownsville, Texas, businessman who headed a drug-trafficking enterprise on the Mexican border through the 1980s and into 1992. In July 1993 a federal jury in the Southern District of Texas convicted him of drug trafficking, money laundering, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and three counts of killing in furtherance of that enterprise. The three dead were Gilberto Matos, Erasmo De La Fuente and Thomas Rumbo. The jury found that Garza carried out one of the killings himself and ordered the other two. It recommended death, and the court imposed it on August 10, 1993.
Garza spent the next eight years in appeals. The case drew attention beyond Texas for two reasons. The jury had heard at the sentencing phase about further killings in Mexico for which he had never been charged, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights later held that this violated his rights. Separately, his execution date was postponed twice by President Clinton while the Justice Department reviewed racial and geographic patterns in federal capital cases. He was executed in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 19, 2001, at the age of 44, eight days after Timothy McVeigh. He was the first person put to death under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, the law that allows a death sentence for killings connected to a drug enterprise.
Garza grew up in south Texas. By the 1980s he owned a construction business in Brownsville. Prosecutors said that business sat beside a second one: from the early 1980s through 1992 he ran an organization that moved large loads of drugs from Mexico into the United States. Prosecutors described him as a drug kingpin, and his trial lawyer argued that the government had inflated his role to fit the profile for a capital case. His later lawyers did not claim he was innocent of the evidence that had been presented against him.
The federal death penalty had been reinstated in 1988 as part of an anti-drug law, and Garza was one of the first people convicted under it. The indictment charged both the continuing criminal enterprise and the killings committed in furtherance of it.
The government's case rested on three deaths between April 1990 and early 1991, all in the Brownsville area and all, in the prosecution's account, connected to the running of the enterprise.
Gilberto Matos died on April 3, 1990. Prosecutors said Garza ordered the killing as part of the running of the enterprise.
Erasmo De La Fuente was 32. The Justice Department's brief in the Supreme Court gives September 8, 1990, as the date of his death, about five months after Matos. Prosecutors said Garza ordered this killing as well.
Thomas Rumbo was 35 and died in early 1991. Of the three, he was the one Garza was convicted of killing himself. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in June 2001 that Garza personally carried out the killing of Rumbo and ordered those of De La Fuente and Matos.
U.S. Customs agents were investigating the organization by 1992. In February 1992 Garza left for Mexico, and he was arrested there on November 6, 1992. After he was returned to the United States, a federal grand jury issued a new indictment on January 3, 1993. It contained three counts of homicide in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise, an offense that carries the death penalty under the 1988 act. On January 7, 1993, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas filed notice that the government would seek death, with the approval of Attorney General William Barr.
The trial was held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas before Judge Filemon Vela. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark Patterson and Jose Angel Moreno prosecuted, and Philip Hilder, a former federal prosecutor, defended. Testimony began on July 7, 1993. Three former members of the organization testified for the government and had received reduced sentences in return. The jury heard 11 days of testimony from 66 witnesses.
On July 29, 1993, the jury unanimously found Garza guilty on all counts: drug trafficking, money laundering, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, and three counts of killing in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise. He denied responsibility for the three deaths. The punishment hearing began the same day before the same jury.
At the punishment hearing the government offered evidence of further killings said to have taken place in Mexico, including testimony from a Customs agent and former members of the organization. Garza was never charged with or convicted of those deaths, and the Amnesty International report of 2001 noted that no physical evidence linked him to them. Accounts disagree on the number. The Inter-American Commission wrote of four killings in Mexico. The Justice Department's brief in the Supreme Court lists five unadjudicated killings on which the jury made aggravating findings, and Ashcroft spoke of five more beyond the three convictions.
The jury unanimously found statutory and non-statutory aggravating factors. It also found four of nine mitigating factors offered by the defense, among them that another defendant or defendants, equally culpable in the crime, would not be punished by death. It then recommended death for each of the three murders. On August 10, 1993, Judge Vela imposed the sentences. He said he was bound by the jury's recommendation, though he did not advocate capital punishment.
Garza's direct appeal went to the Fifth Circuit in 1994. In 1995 the court affirmed the convictions and sentence in United States v. Flores, and it later denied rehearing. The Supreme Court denied certiorari and rehearing in 1996. A claim that the jury should have been told that the alternative to death was life without release was rejected at that stage.
In December 1997 his lawyers filed a federal motion under the post-conviction statute, arguing that the Mexico evidence had violated due process. The district court denied it in April 1998. The Fifth Circuit refused a certificate of appealability in 1999 and denied rehearing that April, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in November 1999.
Garza's first execution date was August 5, 2000. In July 2000 the federal government announced a postponement, citing the lack of clemency procedures for federal death cases and concerns about racial and geographic disparities in capital prosecutions. Clinton had said at a news conference that he was concerned about the racial composition of federal death row and that a prosecution "may turn solely on where you committed your crime." New clemency guidelines took effect on August 2, 2000, and Garza's lawyers filed a clemency petition with the President on September 28, 2000. Clinton granted a reprieve to December 12, 2000. A few days before that date he granted a second, of about six months, so that the Justice Department could analyze the disparities further, and the new date was June 19, 2001. Clinton said that "In this area, there is no room for error."
Garza's representatives took his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. The U.S. government answered on July 20, 2000, arguing that no violation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man had been shown. A hearing was held on October 12, 2000, and the Commission issued a preliminary opinion in his favor on December 4, 2000. Its final decision, Report No. 52/01, Case 12.243, is dated April 4, 2001. The Commission found the State responsible for violations of Articles I, XVIII and XXVI of the American Declaration, related to the procedure used to sentence Mr. Garza to death. It recommended that the United States "provide Mr. Garza with an effective remedy, which includes commutation of his death sentence," and review its laws so as to prohibit "the introduction of evidence of unadjudicated crimes during the sentencing phase of capital trials." Amnesty International quoted the Commission as saying that the admission of that evidence was "antithetical to the most basic and fundamental judicial guarantees" and that he had been sentenced "in an arbitrary and capricious manner." The Commission did not challenge the convictions themselves. U.S. courts had already held that the Declaration is not binding on the United States, and in 2001 the Seventh Circuit denied the claim based on the Commission's decision, the Fifth Circuit denied relief, and the Supreme Court denied leave to file an original habeas petition.
On April 23 and 24, 2001, Garza filed a new petition in the Southern District of Indiana, where he was held, relying on the Commission's decision. That court dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction on May 30, 2001. The Seventh Circuit denied the claim. In the Fifth Circuit he sought leave to file a second post-conviction motion based on the Supreme Court's decision in Shafer v. South Carolina (2001), which concerned jury instructions on parole ineligibility. On May 30, 2001, a panel of Judges Davis, Smith and Wiener denied leave. It held that Shafer did not create a new rule of constitutional law, had not been made retroactive and did not raise a claim that had been previously unavailable, because the same issue had been reviewed on direct appeal. The panel also denied a stay of execution. On June 7 he applied to the Supreme Court for a stay and filed an original habeas petition, and the Justice Department opposed both.
His lawyers also argued that his ethnicity may have influenced the decision to seek death. They cited 26 similar cases (27 in the clemency petition) in which federal prosecutors had not sought death. Ashcroft ordered further study but said on June 18, 2001, that the Justice Department's review had found no evidence of bias in Garza's sentence. He noted that most of the victims, the prosecutor, the presiding judge and most of the jurors were Hispanic, and that of six Hispanic co-defendants who could have faced the federal death penalty, only Garza had been sought for it.
President George W. Bush denied Garza's request for executive clemency. The President's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Bush had found no grounds to grant it. The denial followed Ashcroft's statement of June 18, 2001, that there was no reason to delay the execution further.
On Monday, June 18, 2001, the Supreme Court refused to delay the execution. It rejected a claim that the jury should have been told the alternative was life without release, and a request for delay based on the argument that the death sentence violated international human rights treaties. Garza was executed in Terre Haute on June 19, 2001.
The Mexico killings were never charged and no court convicted him of them. The convictions are for three deaths only.
Garza denied responsibility for the three deaths he was convicted of. His challenges concerned the sentencing procedure, jury instructions, race and international law, and his lawyers said in 2001 that he was not claiming innocence of the underlying evidence.
Early 1980s to 1992: Garza runs a drug-trafficking enterprise based in Brownsville, Texas.
April 3, 1990: Gilberto Matos dies.
September 8, 1990: Erasmo De La Fuente dies.
Early 1991: Thomas Rumbo dies.
February 6, 1992: Customs agents move on Garza's Brownsville business; he leaves for Mexico.
November 6, 1992: Garza is arrested in Mexico and returned to the United States.
January 3, 1993: New federal indictment, with three homicide counts in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise.
January 7, 1993: Notice of intent to seek the death penalty.
July 7, 1993: Trial testimony begins before Judge Filemon Vela.
July 29, 1993: Jury returns guilty verdicts on all counts.
August 2, 1993: Jury findings and death recommendation.
August 10, 1993: Death sentence imposed.
1995: Fifth Circuit affirms in United States v. Flores.
1996: Supreme Court denies certiorari and rehearing.
April 1998: District court denies his post-conviction motion.
November 1999: Supreme Court denies certiorari on that denial.
July 2000: Federal postponement of the August 5, 2000 date.
Late 2000: Clinton grants two reprieves; the new date is June 19, 2001.
April 4, 2001: Inter-American Commission issues Report No. 52/01.
May 30, 2001: Fifth Circuit denies leave for a second motion and a stay.
June 18, 2001: Supreme Court refuses to delay; Ashcroft issues his statement; clemency denied.
June 19, 2001: Garza is executed in Terre Haute, Indiana.