by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News January 7, 2025
Two of the 37 federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison without parole in December by Joe Biden have declined to accept the commutations.
Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, who are both being held in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions in court on Dec. 30 to obtain injunctions to formally refuse the commutations.
Agofsky and Davis contend that the commutations hinder their efforts to appeal their cases.
“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 read, according to NBC News.
Agofsky was sentenced to death in 2004 after he was convicted of stomping a fellow Texas prison inmate to death three years prior.
Agofsky had been serving a life sentence on murder and robbery charges dating back to the 1989 abduction and slaying of a bank president before he was convicted of the 2001 prison killing.
“The defendant never requested commutation,” his filing said. “The defendant never filed for commutation. The defendant does not want commutation, and refused to sign the papers offered with the commutation.”
Agofsky, 53, claims he is innocent in the 1989 bank president murder case and disputes how he was charged in the stomping death case.
Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, was sentenced to death after being convicted for arranging the 1994 murder of Kim Groves, who had filed a civil complaint against him which accused him of beating up a teenager in her neighborhood.
Davis, 60, “has always maintained his innocence,” his filing said, further arguing that the federal court that convicted him did not have jurisdiction in the case.
Davis described his current situation as a “fast-moving constitutional conundrum,” and argued that “having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” he alleges against the Department of Justice.
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