When President Joe Biden announced last month that he would commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 people on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with the lengthy sentences of 1,500 other people held in federal prisons, no one, especially the president, could have imagined that anyone would turn down his merciful gestures. But now two men on the federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, have thrown a monkey wrench into Biden’s decision.
As the Washington Post reports, “Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis were among the 37 federal inmates whose sentences were reclassified on Dec. 23 by Biden from execution to life in prison without parole. Both men have refused to sign the paperwork accepting their commutations and filed emergency motions on Dec. 30 to block them.”
