A pair of death row inmates have turned down the clemency granted to them by President Joe Biden, choosing to take their chance in the courts.
Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60, filed emergency motions at a court in Indiana blocking the commutation of their death sentences to life in prison without parole. Both men are incarcerated at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Agofsky was already serving life for murdering a bank president when he killed a fellow inmate in 2004, leading to his death sentence.
Davis is a former New Orleans police officer who was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill a woman in 1994 after she filed a complaint against him.
Sannon Agofsky and Len Davis have filed emergency motions at a court
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Davis called the clemency from President Biden a “fast-moving constitutional conundrum.”
Lawyers for Agofsky wrote in legal filings that he was trying to “establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated.”
The papers said: “The defendant never requested commutation. The defendant never filed for commutation. The defendant does not want commutation, and refused to sign the papers offered with the commutation.”
It added that commuting his sentence would leave Agofsky in a “position of fundamental unfairness, which would decimate his pending appellate procedures.”
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President-elect Donald Trump
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The announcement comes as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to increase use of the death penalty after he returns to the White House on January 20.
Legal experts said both of those who rejected the clemency from President Biden had an uphill battle in refusing the commutation of their death sentences.
Executive director of the non-profit Death Penalty Information Centre Robin Maher told NBC News that the vast majority of inmates gratefully received the clemency “which is constitutionally authorised and absolute.”
However, President Biden did not grant it for three notorious prisoners who remain on death row.
Dylann Roof appears in court in 2015
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These included Dzhokhar “Jahar” Anzorovich Tsarnaev, who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers and neo-Nazi Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof.
President Biden also pardoned 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offences, in what the White House called the biggest single act of clemency in modern history.
Biden, who leaves office in 11 days, said he would commute the sentences of criminals who had been confined to their homes after being moved from prison to prevent the spread of Covid.