[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 49 (Monday, December 11, 2000)]
[Pages 3023-3024]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on the Decision To Stay the Execution of Juan Raul Garza

December 7, 2000

    Today I have decided to stay the execution of Juan Raul Garza, an 
inmate on Federal death row, for 6 months, until June, 2001, to allow 
the Justice Department time to gather and properly analyze more 
information about racial and geographic disparities in the Federal death 
penalty system.
    I believe that the death penalty is appropriate for the most heinous 
crimes. As President, I have signed Federal legislation that authorizes 
it under certain circumstances. It is clearly, however, an issue of the 
most serious weight. The penalty of death, as Justice Potter Stewart and 
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have reminded us, is ``qualitatively

[[Page 3024]]

different'' from other punishments we impose. Whether one supports the 
death penalty or opposes it, there should be no question that the 
gravity and finality of the penalty demand that we be certain that when 
it is imposed, it is imposed fairly.
    As I have said before, supporters of capital punishment bear a 
special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible 
punishment. Further, Article II of the Constitution vests in the 
President the sole authority to grant pardons and reprieves for Federal 
crimes. Therefore, I have approached this matter with great 
deliberation.
    This fall the Department of Justice released the results of a 
statistical survey of the Federal death penalty. It found that minority 
defendants and certain geographic districts are disproportionately 
represented in Federal death penalty prosecutions. As the Deputy 
Attorney General said at the time the survey was released, no one 
confronted with those statistics can help but be troubled by those 
disparities. We do not, however, fully understand what lies behind those 
statistics. The Attorney General has said that more information and a 
broader analysis are needed to better interpret the data we now have and 
to determine whether the disparities that are evident reflect any bias 
in our system. She has undertaken an effort to gather and analyze the 
relevant information so than an appropriate decision can be made on the 
question of bias.
    After a close and careful review of this issue and after conferring 
with the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, 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 issuing this stay, I have not decided that the death penalty 
should not be imposed in this case, in which heinous crimes were proved. 
Nor have I decided to halt all executions in the Federal system. I have 
simply concluded that 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. In this area, there is no room 
for error.
    I have asked that the Attorney General report to the President by 
the end of April, 2001, on the Justice Department's analysis of the 
racial and geographic disparities in Federal death penalty prosecutions.