Last week, Joe Biden had conservatives fuming when he offered clemency to 37 of the 40 inmates on death row.
As it turns out, two of them did not want the clemency.
Both have refused to sign the paperwork and are taking Biden to court to keep the original sentence intact.
Denied!
Now, to be clear, they are not rejecting the clemency because they want to die.
Both inmates, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, have active appeals, and they believe a commutation of the sentence would hurt their case.
Agofsky’s filing stated, “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.”
Davis “has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” of the Department of Justice.
That seems like a lot of spin when you consider the crimes.
Agofsky was already in prison for the murder of Dan Short when he stomped another prisoner to death, getting hit with the death penalty for that murder.
Davis was a New Orleans police officer who made a deal with local drug dealers to kill Kim Groves, who had filed a report against him for beating a teenager in her neighborhood.
Davis’ death sentence had been tossed at one point, but it was reinstated about 20 years ago.
This just backs up my previous points about the death penalty in that it needs to be carried out much quicker.
As long as the DNA evidence is locked down, I don’t see why we allow these people to live on death row for decades before carrying out the execution.
It only adds to the tax burden of American citizens when we have to pay to keep them alive in a cell.
Make sure they are guilty beyond any doubt, then put them in the chamber and do to them what they did to their victims.
