Two federal prisoners whose demise sentences have been not too long ago commuted by President Biden have requested a decide to dam the discount of their sentences, arguing it may jeopardize their appeals.
The prisoners, Len Davis and Shannon W. Agofsky, stated in separate court docket papers that they refused to signal paperwork proposed with the commutations, which might spare them from execution and cut back their sentences to life in jail with out chance of conditional launch.
The 2 males have been half 37 prisoners on federal demise row whose demise sentences Mr. Biden commuted on December 23, lower than a month earlier than Donald J. Trump returned to the Oval Workplace with a promise to restart federal executions.
In decreeing these commutations, Mr. Biden declared himself “extra satisfied than ever that we should finish using the demise penalty on the federal stage”.
However Mr. Davis and Mr. Agofsky stated they by no means requested a commutation and didn’t need one. The 2 males, who’re being held on the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions Dec. 30 asking a decide to dam their commutations from taking impact.
Mr. Agofsky, 53, was serving a life sentence for a 1989 homicide when he was sentenced to demise in 2004 for the homicide of one other prisoner. In his petition, he stated that if he have been faraway from federal demise row, it could be tougher for him to problem his conviction as a result of it could deprive him of the elevated authorized oversight that comes with federal demise penalty instances.
“He isn’t in search of favors,” Mr. Agofsky wrote in his petition filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Southern District of Indiana. “He simply needs his case to proceed by the courts as scheduled, underneath the safety of scrutiny and with out the interference of partisan politics.” »
Mr. Davis, 60, a former New Orleans police officer, was sentenced to demise in 2005 for ordering the homicide of a girl who had filed a grievance towards him for brutality. In his petition, additionally filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Southern District of Indiana, he stated he has at all times maintained his innocence.
Based on Mr. Davis, a demise sentence “would draw consideration to the intense misconduct” dedicated, in response to him, by the Division of Justice in his case. He thanked the court docket for “its immediate consideration to this quickly evolving constitutional conundrum.”
Mr. Davis and Mr. Agofsky’s requests to dam their commutations have been reported by NBC News. The 2 prisoners wrote their requests by hand and represented themselves in court docket. They might face an uphill battle due to a 1927 Supreme Court decisionauthorized specialists stated.
In that case, the court docket dominated 8-0 {that a} prisoner on demise row couldn’t reject a commutation from President William Howard Taft that decreased his sentence to life in jail and resulted in his switch from jail to Alaska to a jail. Kansas Penitentiary. (Taft, then chief justice, didn’t take part within the case.)
The prisoner argued that the commutation was granted with out his consent. However Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that the president didn’t want the prisoner’s consent for the commutation to take impact.
“Simply because the preliminary sentence can be imposed with out regard to the prisoner’s consent and regardless of his needs, whether or not he likes it or not, it’s the public good, not his consent, which determines what have to be carried out,” Holmes wrote.
Due to that call, Mr. Davis and Mr. Agofsky “each have a fairly robust case towards them within the Supreme Court docket that they need to overcome,” Mark Osler, a professor on the College of St. Thomas in Minneapolis stated in an interview Tuesday. “It’s undoubtedly fairly related.”
On the similar time, Professor Osler stated the lads may argue that the paperwork they needed to signal, they stated, implied the federal government was asking for his or her consent. “So a part of their argument could possibly be that the administration itself conditioned their acceptance by sending them a kind to signal,” he stated.
He famous that the case was uncommon in that it may put the lads liable to execution as they pursued their authorized challenges. If males tried to show their innocence, he stated, “the concern is that accepting forgiveness and mercy implies guilt.”
Robin M. Maher, govt director of the Dying Penalty Data Middle, a nonprofit group that collects information on the demise penalty, stated the Supreme Court docket’s 1927 determination indicated that even when males didn’t wish to sentence commutation, they may not legally reject them.
“Whereas it’s comprehensible that Mr. Davis and Mr. Agofsky are involved concerning the consequence of their instances, their objections can have no impact,” Ms. Maher wrote in an electronic mail. “The President’s energy to commute their demise sentences relies on his constitutional authority and is absolute. »
