Another execution at Terre Haute

TERRE HAUTE (INDIANA): With an apology for ``the pain and grief that I have caused,'' murderer and drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza was executed on Tuesday, eight days after Timothy McVeigh became the first federal inmate put to death since 1963. Garza died by chemical injection, strapped to the same stretcher where McVeigh was put to death last week. He went to his death calmly and, unlike McVeigh, with remorse. ``I just want to say that I'm sorry, and I apologise for all the pain and grief that I have caused,'' he said. ``I ask your forgiveness and God bless.'' As Garza was being executed, about 50 anti-death penalty activists sang ``We Shall Overcome'' and other protest songs. However, the scene at the prison was in stark contrast to the buzz of media activity that met McVeigh's final days. Mr. Dan Dunne, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman, said only about 75 reporters had registered for credentials to cover Garza's death. More than 1,000 reporters had credentials for the McVeigh execution. Garza was the first person to be executed under the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which imposes a death sentence for murders stemming from a drug enterprise. Garza, 44, was convicted of murdering a man by shooting him five times in the head and neck and ordering the deaths of two other men. It was all part of Garza's marijuana smuggling operation, which federal prosecutors say he ran ruthlessly. Death penalty opponents and some former Justice Department officials wondered whether Garza, a Mexican- American born in the United States, would have been sentenced to death if he were white or had committed his crimes elsewhere.

- AP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Jaswant in Australia, to discuss NMD
Next     : I'm out of patience: Trimble