Juan Garza

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Juan Raul Garza (c. 1957 – June 19, 2001) was an American murderer and drug trafficker who was executed for a federal crime.

In 1993, Garza was convicted of murdering three people while running a marijuana smuggling and distribution ring based in Brownsville, Texas. He was sentenced to death and appealed on the basis that the jury were apparently not told that they had the power to recommend life imprisonment instead of the death sentence. Garza's lawyers also claimed that it was unfair that the jury were told that Garza was suspected of four murders in Mexico given that, although a prime suspect in these crimes, he had never been charged or convicted of them.

The appeals failed and on June 19, 2001, aged forty-four, Garza was executed at the federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana by lethal injection. He was pronounced dead a 7:09 a.m. His execution came just eight days after Timothy McVeigh's. Garza's and McVeigh's deaths were the first federal executions since 1963.

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