President Joe Biden had the death sentences of 37 federal inmates commuted last month—but two of those prisoners are refusing to sign the paperwork that would save them from the death chamber.
Biden’s clemency action sees the inmates’ death sentences being commuted to life in prison without parole. The two prisoners, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, are reportedly both filing emergency motions in federal court seeking an injunction to block their sentence change, according to NBC News.
The duo are both inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana and filed the motions in the state’s southern district on Dec. 30 believing that the commutations would affect their plans to appeal their cases on claims of innocence.
A former New Orleans police officer, Davis was convicted in 1994 in the murder of Kim Groves, a local resident who filed a complaint alleging that he had beaten a teenager in her neighborhood. At the time, prosecutors said that Davis hired a drug dealer to kill Groves and charged him with violating Groves’ civil rights.
While his death sentence was initially appealed by a federal appeals court, it was reinstated in 2005. Davis’ filing reads that he “has always maintained his innocence and argued that federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights offenses.”
His filing also argues that he “has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” he alleges against the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, Agofsky was convicted in 1989 for the murder of Oklahoma bank president Dan Short. Prosecutors said Agofsky and his brother, Joseph, abducted and killed Short and proceeded to steal $71,000 from his bank, according to NBC News. His brother, who died in prison in 2013, received a life sentence for the robbery, though the jury didn’t convict him of murder.
Shannon Agofsky however, was convicted of both murder and theft and received a life sentence. He also received a separate conviction in 2001 where he was found guilty of stomping a fellow inmate at a Texas prison to death. A jury recommended the death sentence in 2004.
In his filing, Agofsky disputes how he was charged in the stomping incident and said he’s trying to “establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated.” Moreover, Agofsky suggested in his filing that he didn’t want to lose the option of a legal process known as “heightened scrutiny” by accepting Biden’s clemency.
Considering that one’s life is at risk, death penalty appeals prompt a heightened scrutiny process, where courts closely examine the case for any errors under the urgency of the penalty’s life-or-death consequences.
While the process does not always lead to success, Agofsky’s filing reads: “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.”
“The defendant never requested commutation. The defendant never filed for commutation,” the filing continued. “The defendant does not want commutation, and refused to sign the papers offered with the commutation.”
