2 Death Row Inmates Stun Nation, Say They Won’t Take Biden’s Commutations

In a legal gambit, two death row inmates are trying to avoid the commutation of their sentences by President Joe Biden.

Last month, Biden sprinkled commutations on a number of federal inmates who had been sentenced to death. The commutations did not mean that the inmates involved were free, only that their sentences would be changed to life without the possibility of parole.

However, two inmates want to cling to their death row status because they think it might help in their efforts to have their sentences overturned, according to NBC.

On Dec. 30, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, who are both locked up at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed paperwork to avoid the change in their status.

Shannon Agofsky drowned a bank manager alive, received life in prison, and in prison, kept talking about how he was itching to beat up other prisoners.

Then he killed a fellow prisoner by stomping his neck in and causing him to drown in his own blood.

On camera. Guilty. pic.twitter.com/H3qZD5IQaG

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) December 28, 2024

The legal standard for reviewing death penalty cases, called heightened scrutiny, calls for a close examination of an inmate’s trials for possible errors.

Agofsky wants that on his side.

“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.

Davis’s filing said, he “has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” taking place in the Justice Department.

Dan Kobil, a professor of constitutional law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, said the two inmates have a serious challenge on their hands. A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling established that “the convict’s consent is not required” when a president issues a commutation, NBC reported.

Kobil said just as “we impose sentences for the public welfare, the president and governors in states commute sentences for the public welfare.”

Len Davis was a rotten cop. He dealt crack, he arrested innocents, he stole cars, and the Feds were onto him, so he had a wiretap going.

One day, he killed a witness to him assaulting someone, and the feds caught him on tape, gleeful about it.

Terribly guilty of so many crimes. pic.twitter.com/vJL12jh59S

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) December 28, 2024

Agofsky was convicted in 1989 for the murder and robbery of an Oklahoma bank president. While he was behind bars, he was convicted of stomping another prisoner to death, which sent him to death row, according to the Guardian.

Davis is a former New Orleans police officer who was sentenced to death in 1996 after he was convicted of ordering the killing of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him, according to The Washington Post.

Davis’s death sentence was overturned in 1999, but after a retrial, he was sentenced to death in 2005.

“Prisoner Davis has always maintained his innocence and argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights offenses,” Davis wrote in his filing to avoid having his sentence commuted.

Agofsky’s filing said, he “merely wishes for his case to play out in court as it was meant to, within the protection of heightened scrutiny, and without the interference of partisan politics.”

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