Allies ask Clinton to spare drug kingpin murderer

WASHINGTON - A group of President Clinton's allies are asking him to declare a moratorium on federal executions and spare a Texas man convicted of three murders in 1990 and 1991 as the boss of a marijuana importing ring.

''Unless you take action, executions will begin at a time when your own attorney general has expressed concern about racial and other disparities in the federal death penalty process,'' the group said in a letter Monday to Clinton.

Juan Raul Garza of Brownsville, Texas, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 12. That would make him the first person since 1963 to be put to death under federal criminal statutes prescribing capital punishment.

Garza, who is Hispanic, asked Clinton in September to commute his sentence to life in prison because of ''long-standing racial bias'' in capital punishment sentencing. The president already has postponed his execution once.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert acknowledged Tuesday that the letter had been received but said no decision had been made in Garza's case.

Clinton ''has said that he is troubled by the disparities, geographic disparities that were turned up by the Department of Justice report,'' he said. ''And he has asked for people to take a harder look at that. That's something that we're still examining.''

Among the 40 people signing the moratorium letter were U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh and entertainers Barbra Streisand and Jack Lemmon.