Two of the 37 inmates on federal death row whose sentences were commuted last month to life without parole President Biden reject leniency.
Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60, both in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, are refusing to sign paperwork to accept the president’s clemency action because of the legal options afforded to them on death row, court documents show.
The pair filed emergency motions in federal court on December 30 seeking an injunction to block the modification of their death sentences. They said accepting their commutations would remove the heightened scrutiny that comes with invoking the death penalty.
Enhanced supervision is a legal process in which the courts further investigate cases such as death penalty cases for errors, because these cases are a matter of life and 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 turning down clemency. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
“If he commutes his sentence now, while the defendant is actively litigating in court, he will deprive him of the protection of enhanced supervision,” Agofsky’s file reads. “This imposes an excessive burden and places the defendant in a position of fundamental unfairness, which would decimate his ongoing appeals.”
Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, “has always maintained that receiving a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” against the Justice Department, he wrote in his filing.
But, as Davis noted, the case law on the issue is “pretty murky” and there is no guarantee that the two inmates’ death sentences can be reinstated.
Notably, the Supreme Court ruled in 1927 that a president may grant reprieves and pardons without the convict’s consent. Both prisoners wrote in their files that they never asked for commutation.
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A jury convicted Agofsky of the 1989 murder of Dan Short, an Oklahoma bank president. 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 the robbery. He died behind bars in 2013.
Shannon Agofsky was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted murder and theft. He was later convicted of the 2001 death of fellow inmate Luther Plant while incarcerated in a Texas prison. A jury recommended a death sentence in that case in 2004.
A Texas jury recommended that Shannon Agofsky be sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing a fellow inmate while in prison. (AP)
Agofsky said in his filing last week that he disputes how he was charged with murder in Plant’s death and that he is also trying to “establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated.”
His wife Laura, who married him by phone in 2019, told NBC News that his lawyers encouraged him to apply for a presidential commutation, but he declined because he was offered legal advice crucial in his appeal as a death row inmate prisoner. She said her husband still has lawyers helping him in his case.
She told the newspaper that the mere fact that her husband commuted his sentence is “not a victory for him” because she believes there is evidence that can prove his innocence.
“He doesn’t want to die in prison being labeled a cold-blooded murderer,” she said.
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Davis was found guilty in connection with the Murder from 1994 from Kim Groves, who as a police officer had filed a complaint against him over allegations that he hit a teenager in her neighborhood. Prosecutors accused Davis of violating Groves’ civil rights after accusing him of hiring a drug dealer to kill her.
A federal appeals court overturned Davis’ original death sentence, but it was reinstated in 2005.
Davis “has always maintained his innocence and argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights violations,” his filing reads.
Only three of the 40 men on federal death row are still being executed following President Biden’s commutation measures last month. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, file)
Both Davis and Agofsky are urging a judge to appoint co-counsel in their requests for a commutation order.
The Ministry of Justice 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 we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement last month. “I cannot in good conscience sit back and let a new government resume the executions I stopped.”
The three federal death row inmates who were not granted clemency were Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who was found guilty of 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.
