The requests of two prisoners who have taken the unusual step of asking a federal judge to nullify their death row commutations granted by President Joe Biden should be denied because the act of leniency doesn’t violate the Constitution, the Justice Department argued Monday in a court filing.
The inmates — Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60 — are being held in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the U.S. government puts inmates to death.
A week after Biden announced he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row to life without the possibility of parole, Agofsky and Davis filed emergency motions seeking an injunction to block the change, arguing it could affect their appeals amid claims of innocence in their initial convictions.
In responding to Davis’ request for an injunction, the U.S. government offered three reasons U.S. District Judge James Sweeney should deny it, writing that not only are commutations legal, but also that the president has the authority to decide them and a prisoner has “no authority to reject” one.
“The President’s commutation of a sentence ‘is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed,’” the U.S. attorneys wrote. “Allowing Davis to veto this action would encroach on this exclusive and ultimate authority that is ‘part of the Constitutional scheme.”
The Justice Department said Agofsky has failed to identify a “jurisdictional basis for his petition.” More here