Wednesday, January 08, 2025 - Two of the 37 federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison without parole last month by US President Joe Biden are refusing to accept the action.
Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both inmates at the U.S.
Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions
in federal court in the state's southern district on Dec. 30 seeking an
injunction to block having their death sentences commuted to life in prison
without parole.
The two men argue that accepting the commutations puts them
at a legal disadvantage as they are seeking to appeal their cases.
“To commute his sentence now, while the defendant has active
litigation in court, is to strip him of the protection of heightened scrutiny.
This constitutes an undue burden and leaves the defendant in a position of
fundamental unfairness, which would decimate his pending appellate procedures,”
according to Agofsky’s filing, first reported by NBC News.
Agofsky’s wife told NBC News the concern was he would lose
legal counsel provided to him if his sentence were commuted.
Agofsky received a life sentence after being convicted in
1989 in the robbery and killing of Oklahoma bank president Dan Short. While
imprisoned in a Texas prison, he was convicted in the 2001 stomping death of
another prisoner, placing him on death row.
In the filing, Agofsky is disputing how he was charged with
the murder of a fellow prisoner and is trying to establish his innocence in the
1989 case.
Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, was
convicted for the 1994 murder of Kim Groves, who had filed a civil complaint
against him, accusing him of beating a teenager in her neighbourhood.
Biden’s action marked the highest number of death sentences
commuted by any American president in the modern era.
The clemency action applied to all federal death row inmates
except three who were convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder.
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