Beverley Lumpkin: Halls of Justice

W A S H I N G T O N, June 1 -- As it grows ever more likely that U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch will grant some form of stay to Timothy McVeigh, it's increasingly likely that Juan Raul Garza will end up with the dubious distinction of being the subject of the first federal execution in 38 years.

Garza was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 under the federal kingpin statute for three murders committed as part of a drug-trafficking organization.

There had been some indications that one reason McVeigh dropped his appeals last year was to achieve the notoriety of being No.1.

Now he's apparently decided he'd rather crusade against the incompetence and alleged corruption of the FBI; his attorneys say he nobly has decided the most important thing in his life is to bring integrity to the criminal justice system. (And by the way did you notice this was the first time McVeigh ever cited any concern for the victims? His attorney Rob Nigh said he regrets that any stay might cause them "further pain." Previously McVeigh had dismissed them as the "'woe is me' crowd" or "collateral damage.")

As the spotlight inevitably shifts to Garza, now set to die June 19, it raises some sticky questions for Attorney General John Ashcroft and the administration that McVeigh's execution would not.

You may recall that President Clinton granted Garza a six-month reprieve last December at a time when Justice had released disturbing statistics about apparent racial and geographic disparities in the imposition of the federal death penalty. (To sum up, 70 percent of federal death defendants are minorities, and less than one-third of the states are responsible for over half the federal death cases.)

McVeigh's case does not implicate those questions at all, but with Garza — a Hispanic sentenced to death in Texas — they must be faced.

Clinton said he granted the reprieve because "the examination of possible racial and regional bias should be completed before the United States goes forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very questions raised by the Justice Department's continuing study."

But there are very real questions whether any study of these questions has occurred or is planned.