 Hammer credits the nine-year-old daughter of Juan Raul Garza, Brownsville drug boss and fellow death row inmate (executed in 2001), for his motivation to fight his conviction.The daughter, Elizabeth Ann Garza, reportedly told Hammer that ‘his life could make a difference for others.’ Elizabeth Ann's letter to President Bill Clinton appealing against her own father's sentence was also reported to have motivated Hammer to appeal his own death sentence.Hammer himself wrote to President Clinton, asking him to commute for Garza's sentence to life imprisonment, describing the death penalty as ‘plagued by systemic bias, disparity and arbitrariness.’ Clinton Era documents released in 2014 showed “former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, weighed in on behalf of Juan Raul Garza and David Paul Hammer, arguing that Mr. Clinton should spare them because of problems with the application of capital punishment in America.” 

While housed at the ADX-Florence (CO), Hammer and Timothy McVeigh first became acquainted.