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Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

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As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Governor denies clemency for Oklahoma death-row inmate Brian Darrell Davis

Brian Darrell Davis
Brian Darrell Davis
Gov. Mary Fallin did not issue a stay of execution for convicted murderer Brian D. Davis on Thursday despite the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation for clemency.

Davis is scheduled to be executed June 25 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

The board voted 4-1 last week to recommend clemency for Davis, who was convicted in Kay County of raping and stabbing to death his girlfriend’s mother in 2001. Board members recommended that the death sentence be commuted to life without parole.

Fallin’s office issued a statement Thursday evening, saying the governor had denied clemency to the killer.

Alex Weintz, spokesman for the Governor’s office, did not elaborate on Fallin’s reasoning for going against the recommendation for clemency.

“The governor reviewed the case carefully and takes this responsibility very seriously,” he said.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt denounced the board’s clemency recommendation, calling the decision “incomprehensible” based on the violence of Davis’s crimes.

Davis did not deny killing Sanford, but he told the board at his clemency hearing that there were facts and circumstances jurors may not have been aware of when convicting him.

Clemency is rare in Oklahoma death-penalty cases: Only four death-row inmates have been granted clemency in Oklahoma since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It has executed 103 people during that time, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.


Source: Tulsa World, June 13, 2013

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