Two of 37 federal death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last month President Biden They refuse clemency
Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Lynn Davis, 60, are both at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. They refuse to sign papers to accept the president's clemency action because of the legal remedies available to them on death row, according to court documents.
The couple filed emergency motions in federal court on December 30, asking for an injunction to block the death sentences from being changed, saying that accepting their sentences would be removed from the heightened scrutiny to which death penalty appeals are subject.
Heightened scrutiny is a legal process in which courts examine cases such as death penalty appeals more closely for errors because these cases are a matter of life and death.
Biden commutes the sentences of 37 federal inmates on death row in the final month of the presidency
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 Bals Sinita)
“Committing the sentence now, while the defendant has an active case in court, would mean stripping him of the protection of heightened scrutiny,” Agowski’s filing said. “This creates an undue burden and leaves the defendant in a position of fundamental unfairness, which would doom the pending appeal proceedings.”
Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, “always maintains that issuing a death sentence would draw attention to egregious misconduct” against the Department of Justice, he wrote in his filing.
But, as Davis noted, the case law on the issue is “quite ambiguous” and there is no guarantee the death penalty could be reinstated for the two inmates.
It is worth noting that the Supreme Court ruled in 1927 that the president may grant reprieves and pardons without the consent of the convict. Both prisoners wrote in their files that they never asked for a commutation of their sentence.
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A jury convicted Agofsky of murdering Dan Short, the president of an Oklahoma bank, 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 Agowski was found not guilty of murder, but was sentenced to life imprisonment for robbery. He died behind bars in 2013.
Shannon Agowski was sentenced to life in prison after his conviction Murder and robbery charges. He was later convicted in 2001 of the ramming death of his colleague, Luther Blunt, while in custody in a Texas prison. A jury recommended the death penalty in this case in 2004.
A Texas jury has recommended the death penalty for Shannon Agowski after convicting him of killing a fellow inmate while in prison. (AP)
Agowski said in his filing last week that he questions how he could be charged with murder in Blunt's death, and that he is also seeking to “prove his innocence in the original case for which he was imprisoned.”
His wife, Laura, who married him in 2019, told NBC News that his lawyers encouraged him to seek presidential commutation, but he declined because he had received legal advice crucial to his appeals as a death row inmate. She said her husband still has lawyers helping him with his case.
She told the outlet that only reducing her husband's sentence “is not a win for him” because she believes there is evidence that can prove his innocence.
She added: “He does not want to die in prison after being described as a cold-blooded killer.”
Davis was found guilty in connection with 1994 murder Kim Groves, who filed a complaint against him as a police officer over allegations that he beat a teenager in her neighborhood. Prosecutors charged Davis with violating Groves' civil rights after they accused him of hiring a drug dealer to kill her.
Davis' original death sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court, but it was reinstated in 2005.
Davis “has always maintained his innocence and has maintained that the federal court has no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights crimes,” his filing said.
Only three of the 40 men on federal death row still face the death penalty following President Biden's commutation last month. (AP Photo/Sue Ogroki, File)
Both Davis and Agofsky are urging the judge to appoint co-counsel in their requests for an injunction in mitigation.
the Ministry of Justice US President-elect Trump issued a moratorium on executions during the Biden administration, but President-elect Trump has pledged 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 the use of the death penalty at the federal level must be halted,” Biden said in a statement last month. He added: “With a clear conscience, I cannot stand back and allow a new administration to resume the executions that it suspended.”
The three federal inmates on death row who were not granted clemency are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who was convicted in the 2017 mass shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who was sentenced for the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
