USA: (federal death penalty delayed)

President Clinton yesterday delayed a federal execution scheduled for

Saturday by at least four months, giving attorneys for a Texas murder

convict more time to argue for clemency and postponing a potentially

troublesome political issue for Vice President Gore until after the

November election.

Clinton signed the executive grant of clemency for Juan Raul Garza--which puts off Garza's execution until at least Dec. 12--as he and Attorney General Janet Reno approved new federal clemency regulations.

The new rules grant federal death row inmates--and their victims--the

opportunity to make private oral presentations before the Justice

Department's "pardon attorney" and to submit arguments in writing. Garza

and the families of three victims whom the drug kingpin ordered killed

are slated to be the first to go through that process.

The final decision on sparing a convict's life, however, would still be

up to the president.

Clinton and Gore both support the death penalty, but the president has

expressed concern about the racial and geographic composition of convicts awaiting federal execution. Two-thirds of the 21 people on federal death row in an Indiana prison were convicted in just three states--Virginia, New York and Texas--and almost all of them are minorities. The Justice Department is in the midst of studying the questions raised by those statistics.

"We are pleased the president has stayed the execution date," said Audrey Anderson, Garza's attorney. "Given that up until now there have been no clemency procedures and continuing questions about racial and geographic disparities, we thought it was a reasonable and thoughtful decision."

Anderson said she has submitted a formal request to the Justice

Department for information that would allow her firm to analyze the

demographic data of inmates on federal death row, where there hasn't been an execution in almost 40 years. The Justice Department has not yet responded, she said.

The president took action on the same day a new Harris Poll showed that

support for capital punishment has eroded. A large majority of those

polled--64 percent to 25 percent--still favor the death penalty, but that

is a significant drop from the 75 percent who favored capital punishment

in 1997.

Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, attributed the decline to

the reversal of several convictions following DNA tests, questions about

the fairness of the justice system and the moratorium on executions in

Illinois imposed after 13 inmates on death row there were exonerated.

As a proponent of the death penalty, Gore has been reluctant to criticize

Gov. George W. Bush about the large number of executions in Texas during Bush's tenure, though some of the vice president's allies have raised the issue. Texas executes far more people than any other state; a convict has been put to death every two weeks on average since Bush took office in 1995.

Some Democrats have worried about the potential backlash from minority

voters of a federal execution of an Hispanic man, an issue Gore will not

have to confront during the campaign because of the delay in Garza's case.

"We can only hope that this is based on justice and not politics," said

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.

A federal court imposed the death sentence on Garza in 1993 for the three

murders, which were connected to his drug-trafficking operation. The

Supreme Court denied review of Garza's unsuccessful appeal last year.

Under the new guidelines, a defendant facing the death penalty will be

given at least 120 days notice of his execution and 30 days to file a

petition for commutation of his sentence. All other papers supporting

commutation must be filed no later than 15 days after the filing of the

petition.

All filings and hearings will be confidential because they are considered

part of the president's deliberative process, Justice Department

officials said yesterday.