Looks like the jackbooted thugs are just itching to try out the new
Federal lethal injection chamber on a marijuana distributor, convicted
under the Federal Drug Kingpin law.
This creative bit of legislation permits one to be given the death penalty
for any killing committed by someone the government alleges to be an
associate, even if one didn't order it, was completly unaware of it at the
time, and it had nothing to do with ones business operation. One doesn't
even have to know the person, or be connected to them in any tangible way.
I wonder how long it will be before Amerika will be killing all marijuana
distributors, even when they can't dig up an unrelated murder to smear
them with?
-----
HOUSTON (AP) -- A federal judge Friday set an Aug. 5 execution date for
convicted killer Juan Raul Garza, who would become the first federal
prisoner put to death in almost four decades.
U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela's order calls for Garza to be executed by
injection at 6 a.m. at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind.
Garza is among 20 inmates awaiting execution. Because of pending appeals,
no other inmate has an execution date.
The Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department officials were reviewing a
draft of a detailed technical manual governing the manner of conducting
the execution, said U.S. Attorney Mervyn Mossbacker Jr., who filed the
motion seeking an execution date.
``The government seeks to ensure that this first execution, and those that
follow, will be carried out in an appropriate, dignified and expeditious
manner,'' Mossbacker said.
The last federal execution was in 1963. The Supreme Court ruled in 1972
that the death penalty was unfairly applied. State and federal procedures
were revised and the high court restored the death penalty on the federal
level in 1988, more than a decade after states resumed the punishment.
Among Garza's death row colleagues is Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the
Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds of
others five years ago.
Garza, 43, was convicted in Brownsville, Texas, in August 1993 for killing
three men between April 1990 and January 1991. A 10-count indictment named
him as the boss of a drug ring that imported tons of marijuana into the
United States between 1983 and 1993. Prosecutors sought the death penalty
under a 1988 ``kingpin'' law.
``I didn't kill any of these people,'' he told The Associated Press in a
1994 interview. ``I'm not responsible. ... I got the shaft.''
--
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
