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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Sniper Reverses Stance on Appeal

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McLEAN, Va. (AP) — The convicted sniper John A. Muhammad has changed his mind again and now wants to go forward with a federal appeal of his conviction and death sentence, his lawyers have said.

In a letter from death row made public this week, Mr. Muhammad told the Virginia attorney general that he wanted to suspend all appeals on his 2003 death sentence and that appeals filed on his behalf were not authorized. But Mr. Muhammad’s lawyer James Connell wrote on Thursday to a United States district judge saying Mr. Muhammad now wanted to proceed with his appeal.

“Mr. Muhammad expressly authorized me to represent that (1) he does not wish to be executed; (2) he does not wish to abandon the (appeals) process; and (3) he does not wish to discharge his legal team,” Mr. Connell wrote.

Katherine Baldwin, a senior assistant attorney general who represents Virginia, said Friday that she accepted Mr. Connell’s representation and that she saw no reason to take action based on Mr. Muhammad’s earlier letter.

Mr. Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Malvo, were convicted after the October 2002 sniper shootings that left 10 people dead. Mr. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.

Source: The New York Times
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