USA | Two federal inmates challenge Biden’s clemency, refuse commutation of death sentences

In an unusual move, two prisoners who are among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden in December have refused to sign paperwork accepting his clemency action

Two federal inmates, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, are refusing to accept outing US President Joe Biden’s decision to commute their death sentences to life imprisonment without parole. Their refusal comes after Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates last month, sparing them from execution.

Both men, housed at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, have filed emergency motions in federal court to block the commutations.

Inmates argue commutation hurts legal appeals

Agofsky and Davis claim that the commutation undermines their ability to appeal their convictions under heightened scrutiny, a legal standard that courts apply to death penalty cases due to their life-and-death stakes.

“To commute his sentence now, while the defendant has active litigation in court, is to strip him of the protection of heightened scrutiny,” Agofsky’s filing stated.

“This constitutes an undue burden and leaves the defendant in a position of fundamental unfairness,” his filing further mentioned.

Davis echoed these concerns, writing in his motion that the commutation would diminish attention to what he alleges is misconduct in his case. “The case law on this issue is quite murky,” Davis added, thanking the court for its “prompt attention to this fast-moving constitutional conundrum.”

Legal experts say challenge faces hurdles

Legal scholars note that inmates have little chance of successfully reversing a presidential commutation. A 1927 US Supreme Court ruling established that the president has unilateral authority to grant clemency without the convict’s consent.

A report by NBC News quoted Dan Kobil, a constitutional law professor at Capital University, as explaining that while some prisoners have refused commutations in the past, courts view such decisions as being in the public interest.

“Just as we impose sentences for the public welfare, the president commutes sentences for the public welfare,” Kobil said.

Details of the cases

Agofsky, 53, was convicted in the 1989 murder of an Oklahoma bank president, Dan Short, during a robbery. While serving a life sentence, he was convicted of the 2001 murder of fellow inmate Luther Plant and sentenced to death in 2004. He maintains his innocence in both cases.

His wife, Laura Agofsky, whom he married over the phone in 2019, said he refused to request clemency because his death sentence status provides him with legal counsel critical to his appeals. “He doesn’t want to die in prison being labeled a cold-blooded killer,” she said.

Davis, 60, a former New Orleans police officer, was sentenced to death for orchestrating the 1994 murder of Kim Groves. Prosecutors said Davis hired a drug dealer to kill Groves after she filed a misconduct complaint against him. Davis maintains his innocence and argues that federal courts lacked jurisdiction in his case.

Biden’s clemency decision sparks mixed reactions

Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates, citing his opposition to the death penalty. “I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” the US President said.

His administration had previously imposed a moratorium on federal executions.

While Biden’s decision was praised by anti-death penalty advocates, it faced backlash from some quarters. The Office of the Independent Police Monitor in New Orleans criticised the commutation of Davis’ sentence, calling it “a painful reminder that justice is not always served as it should be.”

“In this action, President Biden showed more mercy for Davis than this corrupt officer ever showed for Kim Groves, her children and family, and the people of New Orleans,” the office said.

Agofsky & Davis continue legal fight

Both inmates are now requesting co-counsel to assist in their legal motions to block the commutations. Despite the challenges, their cases remain ongoing.

Source: firstpost.com, Staff, January 7, 2025

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Instagram | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

A Chinese police officer lights a last cigarette for an inmate moments before his execution. The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide. Dui Hua bases its 2013 estimate on data points published in Southern Weekly that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year. The mainland magazine reported that a former senior judge of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) stated at a seminar in July that the number of executions had reached 1/10 of the highest number recorded since 1979. In 1983 - the 1st year of the Strike Hard campaign during which the power to approve capital punishment was given to provincial high courts - 2...

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

US | Federal judge upholds constitutionality of nitrogen gas executions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ruled that execution by nitrogen gas does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate’s claim that it causes excessive suffering. The ruling came after the first bench trial in the country to examine the constitutionality of the execution method that has now been used to put eight people to death, seven in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The ruling clears the way for Alabama and other states to continue with the method and is a setback for critics who hoped a fuller examination of Alabama’s protocol would halt its use.

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog