In a rare and defiant move, two death row inmates, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, have refused the clemency offered by President Joe Biden, opting instead to continue their legal battles in court.
Both men, incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions to block the commutation of their sentences to life without parole.
Agofsky’s attorney emphasized his client’s firm opposition to the clemency. “He never requested commutation,” the lawyer stated, adding that accepting it would “decimate his pending appellate procedures.”
Agofsky, 53, is seeking to overturn his conviction for murdering a bank president, a crime for which he was already serving a life sentence when he killed a fellow inmate in 2004, leading to his death sentence.
Len Davis, a 60-year-old former New Orleans police officer convicted of orchestrating a hit on a woman who had filed a complaint against him, echoed similar sentiments.
“The threat of the death penalty hanging over me is the only way to highlight the overwhelming misconduct by the Department of Justice,” Davis said in a statement.
He described the clemency order as a “fast-moving constitutional conundrum.”The inmates’ refusal comes on the heels of President Biden’s historic issuance of 37 pardons last month, marking the largest commutation of death sentences in U.S. history.
Despite this, both men are determined to challenge the terms of their reprieve. Legal experts suggest their battle to reject clemency will be an uphill one. “This is uncharted territory,” one expert remarked.
However, lawyers for Agofsky insist that commuting his sentence would place him in a “position of fundamental unfairness,” undermining his efforts to establish innocence in the original case.
As the legal drama unfolds, the inmates’ resistance underscores the complexity of navigating clemency when it intersects with ongoing appeals and claims of justice system misconduct.
