EU Policy On The Death Penalty
République Française
AMBASSADE DE FRANCE
AUX ETATS-UNIS
Service de Presse et de Communication
4101 Reservoir Road, NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 944-6000
Washington, July 27, 2000
Communiqué from the French Presidency
of the EU
The European Union, in a demarche made at the White
House with President Clinton's Chief Counsel Beth Nolan, has called
on the federal authorities not to break a de facto moratorium on
the federal death penalty of almost forty years and to grant Mr.
Juan Raul Garza, a death row inmate under federal law, clemency.
The European troika, led by the French Ambassador,
Mr. François Bujon de l'Estang, also called on the federal government
to consider imposing an immediate moratorium on federal executions
as a first step toward the general abolition of the death penalty
in the United States.
Expressing the hope that the current circumstances
would pave the way to a suspension of the federal executions and
to a review of the administration of the federal death penalty,
the representative of the presidency of the European Union delivered
the following letter, addressed to President Clinton.
Dear Mr. President,
I have the honor to write you today on behalf
of the European presidency.
Your administration is well aware of the European
Union's commitment to the abolition of the death penalty, which
is regularly evoked in our relations with the State Department.
The case of Juan Raul Garza, already the subject of a European Parliament
resolution passed on April 13, elicits great emotion and sustained
interest in our countries because of its symbolic import. Indeed,
you better than anyone else know that no federal executions have
taken place since 1963 and that consequently his execution would
break a de facto 37-year moratorium.
The European Union has taken note of your intention
to postpone the execution to allow the Justice Department to develop
new clemency regulations for death row inmates and we cannot but
express satisfaction at your decision. But the Constitution gives
you the incontestable and uncontested power to grant clemency. The
European Union solemnly asks you to use that power in favor of Mr.
Garza and to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. In such
a decisive case, we invite you to make a decision that sets an example.
More generally, you know that the European Union
hailed the decision by the Governor of Illinois to decree a moratorium
on executions in his state. We have been campaigning, and continue
to campaign, for the Governors of the other 37 states concerned
to establish an immediate moratorium on executions. The European
Union thus encourages you, on the occasion of granting clemency
for Mr. Garza, which we wholeheartedly appeal to you to do, to decree
a moratorium on federal executions.
Please accept, Mr. President, the expression
of my highest consideration.
François Bujon de l'Estang
Ambassador of France
In the same spirit, the European Union also expressed,
in letters addressed
to U.S. Senators Russel D. Feingold, Carl Levin, Tom Harkin and
Paul D. Wellstone, and U.S. Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.,
its support to their recent call on President Clinton to suspend
all federal executions.
