HomePoliticsTwo inmates cannot legally object to Biden's death row commutation, DOJ argues

Two inmates cannot legally object to Biden’s death row commutation, DOJ argues

The requests of two inmates who took the unusual step of asking a federal judge to annul their death row commutation granted by President Joe Biden should be denied because the clemency measure does not violate the Constitution, the Department of Justice argued. Justice in a court on Monday. submit.

The prisoners – Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60 – are being held at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the US government puts prisoners to death. A week after Biden announced he would commute the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates to life without the possibility of parole, Agofsky and Davis filed emergency motions seeking an injunction to block the change, arguing that this could impact their appeal amid claims. of innocence in their initial beliefs.

In response to Davis’ request for an injunction, the U.S. government provided three reasons why U.S. District Judge James Sweeney should deny it. He writes that not only are commutations legal, but also that the president has the authority to decide them and that a prisoner “has no authority to reject one.”

“The President’s commutation of a sentence ‘is the determination by the final authority that the public welfare will be better served by imposing less than what is specified in the sentence,’” the U.S. attorneys wrote. “Allowing Davis to veto this action would infringe on this exclusive and ultimate authority that is ‘part of the constitutional scheme.’”

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The Justice Department said Agofsky failed to identify a “jurisdictional basis for his petition.”

In his filing, Agofsky said he worries that no longer being sentenced to death would deprive him of heightened scrutiny of his case or of the process in which courts would be required to examine death penalty cases for errors due to the impact on life and death sentence. .

In addition to requesting an injunction, the men also requested the appointment of co-counsel to assist them in the latest lawsuit.

Sweeney agreed last week and gave the inmates representation through the Indiana Federal Community Defenders.

Sweeney noted in an order granting legal aid that federal prisoners are only entitled to legal representation if they are on death row or for evidentiary hearings in their cases.

“Here, Mr. Agofsky is no longer under the death penalty,” Sweeney wrote. “Therefore, the appointment of counsel is purely a discretionary matter.”

He added that the court has “serious doubts as to whether it has any power to block a commutation,” but that “given the novelty of the legal issue, the court prefers to receive guidance on the motion. ”

The Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2019.

Sweeney referenced a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated a president has the power to grant reprieves and pardons and that “the consent of the convict is not required.”

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However, Agofsky believes he has the right to refuse a commutation based on the language in the Constitution, which states that a president “shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for crimes against the United States, except in cases of impeachment’.

According to Agofsky’s wife, Laura, the word “subsidy” is what he believes means someone must have submitted an initial request. In his case, he said, as in Davis’s, the men never asked for a commutation and refused when asked several times for a reduced sentence.

They claim this sets them apart from other former death row inmates who did seek commutation.

Davis and Agofsky are expected to respond to the Justice Department’s response this week.

Agofsky was convicted of the 1989 murder of bank President Dan Short, whose body was found in an Oklahoma lake. Federal prosecutors said Agofsky and his brother, Joseph Agofsky, kidnapped and murdered Short and made off with $71,000.

Both brothers received life sentences. But it was while locked up in a Texas prison that Shannon Agofsky was convicted in 2001 for the death of a fellow inmate, Luther Plant, and sentenced to death in 2004. (Joseph Agofsky died in prison in 2013.)

Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, was convicted in 1994 of killing Kim Groves, who had filed a complaint accusing him of beating a teenager. Prosecutors said Davis hired a drug dealer to kill Groves, and they accused him of violating Groves’ civil rights. Davis’ original death sentence was thrown out by a federal appeals court but reinstated in 2005.

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Davis “has always maintained his innocence and argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights violations,” he wrote in his filing last month, seeking an order of commutation.

Biden’s sweeping clemency move has been praised by anti-death penalty groups but also criticized by some families of the victims, who say they believe death row inmates do not deserve such clemency.

Biden refused to grant commutations to three federal death row inmates involved in mass murders or terrorist attacks.

Still, President-elect Donald Trump said after the announcement that he would “vigorously pursue the death penalty” during his second term. He has also said he would expand the death penalty at the federal level to child molesters, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking, though it remains unclear how he would do that.

Trump’s first term ended with thirteen federal prisoners being put to death. The Biden administration announced a moratorium on federal executions after coming to power, saying last month that he allowed the commutation of death row because “I cannot in good conscience sit back and let a new administration continue the executions which I have stopped can be resumed.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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