Summary
Two federal death row inmates, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, are challenging President Joe Biden’s commutation of their death sentences to life without parole.
They argue the commutations harm their legal appeals, stripping them of heightened judicial scrutiny and legal counsel access.
Agofsky is contesting convictions for a 1989 murder and a 2001 prison killing, while Davis, a former police officer, was convicted for orchestrating the 1994 murder of a civil rights complainant.
Biden’s clemency, excluding three high-profile cases, commuted 37 federal death row sentences, a historic number.
Just because you have been found guilty does not mean that you cannot subsequently have that finding overturned on appeal. Procedurally, there are a bunch of rules on how that happens; and death row inmates are given more appelet rights than those with life sentences. By having their sentences commuted to life, those would inmates may lose some of their extra appelet writes.