thumb|While in Texas state custody Garza was held at the [[Ellis Unit in Walker County, Texas]]

thumb|[[USP Terre Haute, where Garza was held on federal death row and executed]]

Juan Raul Garza (November 18, 1956 – June 19, 2001) was an American murderer and drug lord who was executed by the United States federal government for three drug-related murders. In addition, Garza was linked to at least five other drug-related murders in Texas and Mexico. He was executed in 2001, eight days after Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Early life

Juan Raul Garza, the son of Mexican migrant farmworkers, was born in Brownsville, Texas, but spent his early years in Michigan. In his teenage years, he worked in the fields with his parents and sold fruit door to door. Garza initially slept on mats, but eventually saved enough money for a bed.

Although he dropped out of high school, Garza owned a successful construction business. He was well known in the community as a devoted father of four children and the son-in-law of one of the town's most respected pastors. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, after returning to Texas, Garza would become the head of a drug-trafficking enterprise that smuggled thousands of kilograms of marijuana from Mexico into the United States. The organization was based in three states: Texas, Louisiana, and Michigan. Garza's organization started with him and members of his group running small quantities of marijuana across the Mexican border. But within a few years, Garza was making frequent trips to Oaxaca, where the marijuana was grown, and transporting it across the border via plane.

Murders, trial, and execution

Garza's drug trafficking ring began to encounter problems. He suffered dents in his profits after some of his shipments were seized by the police. Garza's losses made him suspicious that some of his workers and associates were working with the police. This distrust would ultimately culminate in the murders he ordered and personally committed.

In April 1990, Gilberto Matos became the first confirmed victim of Garza and his gang. Matos was a bodyguard of 32-year-old Erasmo De La Fuente, a smuggler who worked with Garza. Garza suspected that De La Fuente was responsible for a massive shipment (approximately 1,350 pounds) of marijuana being seized by the police. Garza ordered his workers to murder De La Fuente. However, they ran into trouble since De La Fuente had several bodyguards, including Matos. After federal officers observed him loading 360 pounds of marijuana into a trailer, they approached him and told him what they saw. Rumbo agreed to turn over the entire shipment. In an attempt to hide what he'd done, he cut a hole in the fence surrounding the trailer and claimed the drugs were stolen. Garza became one of the first people to face execution under this law.

In 1993, Garza was found guilty on all counts. The jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that he was responsible for four unsolved murders in Mexico: the April 1991 murder of 54-year-old Oscar Cantu in Reynosa, the May 1991 murder of 35-year-old Fernando Escobar Garcia, the murder of 32-year-old Lauro Antonio Nieto in May 1991, and the murder of his own son-in-law, 21-year-old Bernabe Sosa, who was found dead near the Rio Grande in January 1992. During his testimony, Jesus said he was terrified of Garza and followed all of his orders to avoid becoming one of his victims, even killing one of his friends, whom he'd known for more than a decade.

In addition to the aggravating factors, the jury found four mitigating factors: Garza was under a great deal of stress at the time of the murders, he was somewhat young, his codefendants were facing lesser sentences, and all of the victims were also criminals who had voluntarily participated in the drug trade.

Upon hearing the jury's decision, U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela Sr. told Garza that, "The only thing that I can ask you to consider is to start making your peace to your God." Filemon Vela Sr. said that while he wasn't a personal advocate of the death penalty, Garza's crimes were much worse than his advocates had portrayed.<blockquote>"I can tell you what the evidence showed - it was not for three homicides. More than that took place at that time, all resultant of drug activities."</blockquote>On July 13, 1999, federal authorities moved Garza, who had committed the crime in Texas but was under a federal death sentence, out of the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and into Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody. Garza was one of three condemned inmates moved from the Texas state male death row on that day due to the opening of the new federal death row wing in USP Terre Haute, Terre Haute, Indiana. Garza had TDCJ ID 999074 All appeals failed, and on June 19, 2001, Garza was executed at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute by lethal injection.

Garza's execution took place just eight days after domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh was put to death at the same location. Garza was initially scheduled to be executed in December 2000, but was granted a short stay of execution. Many people believe the stay was intended to give McVeigh the milestone of becoming the first person executed by the federal government in the modern era.<blockquote>"At that point he did somewhat of a sigh, like it's over."</blockquote>Garza was pronounced dead five minutes later.

See also

  • Capital punishment by the United States federal government
  • Capital punishment in the United States
  • List of people executed by the United States federal government
  • List of people executed in the United States in 2001

References

  • Juan Raul Garza. The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
  • IACHR Report 52/01 Case 12.234, Juan Raul Garza, USA. Official report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States
  • "Date set for First Federal Execution since 1963." Federal Bureau of Prisons. May 26, 2000.

! colspan="3" | Executions carried out by the United States federal government

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! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in the United States