Two death row inmates are rejecting Biden’s fight to commute their sentences because of their innocence
Two of 37 federal death row inmates whose sentences were commuted last month to life without parole President Biden they refuse pardon.
Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60, who are both in the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, are refusing to sign papers accepting the president’s clemency action because of the legal options available to them while they await death, according to court documents.
The couple filed emergency motions in federal court on Dec. 30 seeking an injunction to block the commutation of their death sentences, saying accepting their death sentence commutations would remove the increased scrutiny that death penalty appeals receive.
Enhanced scrutiny is a legal process in which courts scrutinize cases such as death penalty appeals for errors because these cases are a matter of life or death.
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Two of the 37 federal death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole by President Biden are refusing clemency. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Cenet)
“Reducing his sentence now, while the defendant is actively litigating in court, means depriving him of the protection of enhanced supervision,” Agofski’s submission states. “It imposes an unnecessary burden and leaves the defendant in a position of fundamental dishonesty, which would decimate his ongoing appeals.”
Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, “has always argued that the death penalty would draw attention to the massive misconduct” against the Justice Department, he wrote in his filing.
But, as Davis noted, the case law on this issue is “pretty murky” and there is no guarantee that the death penalty will be reinstated for the two inmates.
Namely, the Supreme Court ruled in 1927 that the president can grant reprieves and pardons without the convict’s consent. Both prisoners wrote in their submissions that they never requested a commutation of their sentence.
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A jury convicted Agofsky of killing Oklahoma bank president Dan Short in 1989. His body was found in a lake after prosecutors said Agofsky and his brother Joseph Agofsky kidnapped and killed Short before stealing $71,000 from the bank.
Joseph Agofsky was found not guilty of murder, but was sentenced to life in prison for robbery. He died behind bars in 2013.
Shannon Agofsky was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of charges of murder and robbery. He was later convicted in 2001 of the stomping death of an inmate, Luther Plant, while incarcerated in a Texas prison. In 2004, a jury recommended the death penalty in that case.
A Texas jury has recommended that Shannon Agofsky be sentenced to death after he was convicted of murdering a fellow inmate while in prison. (AP)
Agofsky said in his filing last week that he disputes being charged with manslaughter in Plant’s death and is also seeking to “establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated.”
His wife, Laura, who married him over the phone in 2019, told NBC News that his lawyers had urged him to seek the president’s impeachment, but he declined because he had legal counsel who was instrumental in his appeals as a convicted prisoner. to death. She said her husband still has lawyers helping him with his case.
She told the newspaper that her husband’s commuted sentence alone is “not a victory” because she believes there is evidence to prove his innocence.
“He doesn’t want to die in prison labeled a cold-blooded killer,” she said.
Davis was found guilty in relation to s murder in 1994 Kim Groves, who filed a police report against him for allegedly beating a teenager in her neighborhood. Prosecutors charged Davis with violating Groves’ civil rights after accusing him of hiring a drug dealer to kill her.
A federal appeals court threw out Davis’ original death sentence, but it was reinstated in 2005.
Davis “has always maintained his innocence and argued that federal court lacked jurisdiction to try him for civil rights violations,” his filing said.
Only three of the 40 men on federal death row still face execution after President Biden commuted the sentence last month. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
Both Davis and Agofsky are urging the judge to appoint co-counsel in their motions to bar commutations.
The Ministry of Justice issued a moratorium on executions during the Biden administration, but President-elect Trump has vowed to expand federal executions when he returns to the White House later this month.
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“I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement last month. “In good conscience, I cannot stand down and allow the new administration to continue the executions that I stopped.”
The three federal death row inmates who have not been pardoned are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who was found guilty in the 2017 mass shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who was convicted of the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
