2 death row inmates reject Biden’s commutations insisting they’re innocent: report

A pair of inmates on death row are thumbing their noses at President Joe Biden’s commutations of their sentences, according to a report.Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, inmates at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions in federal court last week seeking to block having their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole, NBC News reported.Both men insist they are innocent and argue that having their sentences commuted hurts their appeals, according to the report.”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,” Agofsky’s filing said.Davis, meanwhile, Davis said he “has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” he has accused the Justice Department of engaging in.NBC noted that a 1927 Supreme Court ruling found that presidents do not need the inmates’ consent to grant pardons or reprieves. ALSO READ: ‘Bring it on’: Defiant Raskin responds to GOP threats of retaliation for J6 investigationAgofsky along with his brother, Shannon, was convicted of a 1989 armed robbery of a bank and the murder of bank president Dan Short. While serving a life sentence, Agofsky was convicted of murdering a fellow federal prison inmate, for which he was sentenced to die. His brother died in 2013. Davis was a former New Orleans police officer convicted of killing a 32-year-old mother who accused him of police misconduct after she said she saw him wrongly attack a young man he had suspected in a police officer’s shooting. Davis received a death sentence that was temporarily reversed before being reinstated in 2005.Biden removed the death sentences of 37 of 40 prisoners on the federal death row list, replacing them with life imprisonment. His move earned scorn from the right, including President-elect Donald Trump, who hit out at Biden in a Christmas Eve meltdown.“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” Trump wrote at the time.“When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”

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