USA: Two inmates sentenced to death reject Joe Biden’s act of clemency – Statement

In recent weeks, the German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has vehemently supported the campaign to convince President Joe Biden to commute death sentences at the US federal level.

Today we learned about a different perspective through the article “Two death row inmates reject Biden’s commutation of their life sentences” on NBC News.

For our part, we are publishing the following statement:

The German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has noted with sorrow that two of the 37 US federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by President Joe Biden are refusing this form of pardon.

Shannon Agofsky (53) and Len Davis (60) justify their refusal to accept commutation on the grounds that it would harm their appeals and attempts to prove their innocence – only those who are sentenced to death – they point out – have the right to a more intensive review of their conviction.

The German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which has actively joined the campaign to persuade President Biden to commute all death sentences at the federal and military level, finds it regrettable that the news of the commutation of the death sentences to life imprisonment was not cause for joy for all 37 individuals concerned.

We understand the decisions of Mr. Agofsky and Mr. Davis. We do not see this as a fundamental rejection of the campaign to persuade President Biden to commute the federal death sentences, nor as an endorsement of the death penalty itself.

The crucial aspect is rather that it is simply unacceptable for convicted prisoners to have to fear that, as “lifers”, they will have a worse chance in court appeals than prisoners sentenced to death.

We therefore see Mr. Agofsky and Mr. Davis’s position not as an argument in favor of the death penalty, but as a criticism of the American legal system, which has once again demonstrated its lack of justice when prisoners sentenced to death have better chances in appeal proceedings than those sentenced to life – or at least have reason to fear this.

German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty