Federal government to execute first inmates in more than 38 years

By Alisha Brown
Staff Reporter

It has been 38 years since a convicted criminal was put to death by the hands of the federal government, but May 16 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh will go down in the history books as the first to die by lethal injection in the 21st century.

McVeigh also holds another record for the shortest amount of time spent on death row — just less than four years — since he waived his right for appeals after being convicted in 1997 for killing 168 people in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in 1995.

The last person to be executed by the federal government was Victor Feguer in 1963 for kidnapping and murder, according to the Death Penalty Information Organization’s Web site.

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled the state and federal death statutes unconstitutional because they allowed for arbitrary application, according to the Washington Post Web site.

After state revisions, the death penalty returned four years later.

But such a controversial matter never truly left the nation’s court room, and in recent years, various groups have lobbied for and against federal and state executions.

During the Clinton administration, Juan Raul Garza’s case shuffled into the spotlight.

Garza, a marijuana-ring boss, was convicted in 1993 in Texas for three murders in 1990 and 1991, according to CNN’s Web site.

A Supreme Court decision in 1988 had made a new death penalty statute for murder in the case of a drug kingpin conspiracy, according to the Washington Post’s Web site.

He spent more than seven years on death row awaiting lethal injection. His execution date was set for Dec. 12, 2000. But in September 2000 Garza asked Clinton to reduce his sentence to life in prison because of long-standing racial biases in capital punishment, according to the Associated Press.

The Justice Department released a 40-page review of capital punishment the same month entailing cases of discrimination.

“It found that minority defendants, and certain geographic districts, are disproportionately represented in federal death penalty prosecutions,” Clinton said in September. “… After a close and careful review of this issue … I am not satisfied that, given the uncertainty that exists, it is appropriate to go forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very issues at the center of that uncertainty.”

In a decision made Dec. 7, 2000, Clinton postponed Garza’s execution until June 2001, allowing the Justice Department more time to gather information for death row inmates seeking presidential clemency.

But McVeigh will precede him by a month. Both McVeigh and Garza await execution, along with 19 other death row inmates, in Terre Haute, Ind.

In the last month, the federal penitentiary has seen an influx of security and publicity from the approaching executions.

Nearly 400 state, local and federal law enforcement officers will be stationed at the prison to handle the attention McVeigh’s execution is bringing, according to the Associated Press.

Alisha Brown
a.k.brown2@student.tcu.edu