Two federal death row inmates prefer the prospect of death over life imprisonment. Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both housed at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, have refused to sign paperwork accepting President Biden's commutations of their death sentences and filed emergency motions in federal court in Indiana's southern district on Dec. 30 seeking an injunction to block the commutations, NBC News reports. The two inmates convicted of murder maintain their innocence and want heightened scrutiny—the legal process in which courts inspect death penalty cases for errors.
Agofsky, 53—who was convicted of murdering Dan Short, an Oklahoma bank president, in 1989 and then convicted in the stomping death of inmate Luther Plant in 2001—argues that "to strip him of the protection of heightened scrutiny ... constitutes an undue burden, and leaves the defendant in a position of fundamental unfairness, which would decimate his pending appellate procedures." Agofsky is working to "establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated" and is also disputing how he was charged with murder in the second case, according to his filing. "He doesn't want to die in prison being labeled a cold-blooded killer," his wife tells NBC.
Davis, 60—a former New Orleans police officer convicted in the 1994 murder of Kim Groves, who'd made a complaint against him—"has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct" he claims against the Justice Department, though his filing notes that case law on the issue is "quite murky" and there's no guarantee his death sentence can be restored, per Fox News. A 1927 Supreme Court ruling notes "the convict's consent is not required" when a president grants reprieves and pardons, per NBC. Still, Davis and Agofsky are asking a judge to appoint a co-counsel in their requests for an injunction. (More death row stories.)
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