Joe Biden, two days before Christmas and in the final days of his presidential term, commuted 37 of the 40 federal prisoner’s death sentences to life imprisonment. We can only begin to understand their crime by listening to what they did. They were all responsible for the brutal murder of several people.

• Jorge Avila Torrez “sexually abused and stabbed two girls — Laura Hobbs and Krystal tobias, 8 and 9 — who were riding their bikes in their neighborhood, in a suburban area north of Chicago, in 2005.” He admitted his crimes four years later. He then kidnapped a woman , raped her, and strangled her , in a remote area of Northern Virginia. She was able to survive and report the crime to police. This led to his arrest.
• In Richmond, Virginia, two gang members were involved in 11 drug-related killings in the span of 45 days during 1992. Richard Tipton was convicted of six murders and James Roane of three murders.
• Anthony Battle‘murdered a prison guard in Atlanta with a hammer while serving a lifetime sentence for the murder of his wife, an US Marine in 1987. Battle confessed he killed because he “was tired of being bossed about” and he wanted to kill the “first guard he seen.” He showed no remorse. Three prison guards testified at Battle’s trial that Battle’s actions encouraged other prisoners to make threats against staff, because “without death penalty, prisoners believe that there is nothing they can do.”
• Marvin Gabrion killed Rachel Timmerman, 19, before she could testify against him in a 1997 case of rape. He wrapped her up in chains and concrete blocks and handcuffed Rachel Timmerman. Rachel’s 11 month-old daughter was also murdered. Her body has not been found. Gabrion denies that she was murdered. Authorities were willing to drop the death penalty if Gabrion could only tell them where the body of the 11-month old was. Prosecutors claim Gabrion was also responsible of the deaths of three missing men, including Robert Allen, an 11-month-old mentally disabled boy from Kent County, Wayne Davis, the alleged witness of Timmerman being sexually assaulted, and John Weeks who lured Timmerman, her daughter, and herself to Gabrion prior to Timmerman’s murder.
• Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fullks , in 2002, carjacked, abducted, and murdered two women: Alice Donovan, 44, of South Carolina, and Samantha Burns, 19, of West Virginia. This was in the middle of a 17 day crime spree, after they had escaped from a county prison in western Kentucky.
• Iouri Michhel and Jurijus Kasdamovas were Soviet-born immigrants who kidnapped Russian and Georgian immigrants over a period of four months starting in 2001. They lured victims by offering business deals. The ransom was more than $1,000,000, but they killed their victims anyway by strangulation and dumped them in a reservoir close to Yosemite National Park. Mikhel, Kadamovas and their gang have devised several escape plans since being imprisoned.
• Thomas Sanders killed a 12-year-old girl and a woman in 2010. Sanders (53) dated Suellen Roberts (31). He invited Lexis and her mother to go to a wildlife reserve near the Grand Canyon for a 3-day trip. Sanders shot Suellen in the head as they returned to Nevada. He also kidnapped Lexis. “Sanders drove across the country for several days before he killed Lexis Roberts, in a wooded part of Catahoula Parish in Louisiana. Sanders killed Lexis by shooting her four times and cutting her throat. He then left her dead in the woods. At the trial, the jury listened to a recorded confession where Sanders confessed killing both the mother and the daughter.”
• Alejandro Umana fatally shot Ruben Garcia Salinas in 2007 and Manuel Garcia Salinas in North Carolina. “Umana was a member in a gang. He and two non-gang members were having dinner at Greensboro’s restaurant. They ‘exchanged’ words. Then, Umana pulled out a semiautomatic pistol, and shot both men.”
• Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez stopped a car in 2006 on the Florida Turnpike, and shot a family to death: Jose Luis Escobedo, his wife Yessica, and their two sons Luis Julian and Luis Damian. Both died in their mothers arms. The bodies of the victims were discovered in the grass along Florida’s Turnpike. Jose was in debt for drugs, which led to the murders.
• Edward Fields was a former Oklahoma prison guard who killed Charles and Shirley Chick in 2003 at a campsite in the Ouachita Forest National Forest for no other reason than to have fun. “He scouted them at the campsite in a homemade suit of a sniper and shot them with his rifle.”
• Kaboni savage was convicted in Philadelphia of killing 12 people or ordering their deaths, including four young children.
• Julius Robinson was a wholesale drug dealer who operated in five states. He murdered two men in 1998-1999, Johnny Lee Shelton, Juan Reyes and Rudolfo Resendez. Robinson shot Shelton by mistake. Juan Reyes was “not the target” but “was shot at close range in the driveway of his house.”
• Aquilia marcivicci barnette murdered two people in 1998, his ex girlfriend and another man in a carjacking.
• Brandon Council murdered two bank staff, a teller, and a manager during a bank robbery that took place in South Carolina in 2017.

Prisoners Kill Other Prisoners

Biden commuted nine death sentences to life for prisoners who had killed other prisoners. (Add these to the prisoner cited above, who murdered a guard). The threat of execution against prisoners who commit murders in prison is not only morally just, but also serves as a deterrent to murders in prison. Prisoners who have already been incarcerated to life do not need to worry about anything else. Some prisoners who committed murders in prison had been in prison before:

• Shannon Agofsky was already serving a life term for a 1989 murder. He kidnapped Dan Short and forced him to open a Missouri bank. He stole $71,000 from him, drove him to Oklahoma where he tied him to a “cement-weighted” chair and threw his alive in a lake. In 2001, while in prison, he killed Luther Plant, 37, who was an inmate in a federal penitentiary located in Texas.
• Joseph Ebron was in prison after two previous murders. In 2005, he “helped in the stabbing death” of a fellow inmate Keith Davis in a federal prison located in Beaumont, Texas. Ebron held Davis as another inmate stabbed 106 times. “That inmate then killed himself in prison.”

Some prisoners have committed their first murders in prison.

• Mark Snarr and Edgar Garcia were being transported to their cell in a federal Texas jail when the pair slipped out of their hand restraints and pulled homemade knives and stabbed 2 correction officers. The two men took the keys off a guard’s belt to unlock the cell of a fellow inmate, Gabriel Rhone. They then stabbed him over fifty times.
• Charles Hall and Wesley Coonce murdered Victor Castro-Rodriguez in 2010. The duo chose Castro-Rodriguez as a target because he had previously intervened in order to protect a Bureau of Prisons employee who was being attacked by an inmate. Coonce had already been sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, carjacking and raping a woman. Hall was serving a sentence for threatening a federal prosecutor and judicial officer.”
• Christopher Cramer and Ricky Fackrell killed Leo Johns, a fellow prisoner. Cramer, Fackrell and Johns were all members of the pagan white supremacy organization “Soldiers of the Aryan Culture.” Cramer claimed they wanted to punish Johns because he had violated their rules against gambling and drinking. But things got out of control. Both men were convicted of robbery, violence, and assaulting other prisoners in prison. (Fackrell would be charged with the murder of another inmate months later.)
• Carlos Caro was serving a 30 year sentence for drug trafficking when he strangled Robert Sandoval to death in 2003 with a damp bath towel. Caro, a Texas Syndicate member, claimed that Sandoval ate his breakfast. Caro had previously stabbed a rival gang member 29 times.

Heinous Single Murders Outside Prison

Other people who were sentenced to death and had it commuted into life imprisonment, committed heinous murders.

• Richard Jackson kidnapped and murdered Karen Styles, 22, in Asheville in North Carolina in 1994 while she was out for a run. A hunter discovered her partially-naked body, duct taped to a branch with a bullet wound in the head. Jackson confessed later to the crime.
• Daryl Lawrence “shot and killed Columbus (Ohio) police officer Bryan Hurst in 2005 during an attempted robbery.” It was his Fourth bank robbery within a little more than a year. Hurst was working at Fifth Third Bank on special duty when Lawrence, armed with a pistol, entered the bank and shot Hurst. Lawrence confessed his crimes.
• Thomas Hager was one of the three men in 1993 who “stabbed Barbara White” a 19-year old single mother. Hager’s accomplices testified that they were crack cocaine dealers at the time and worked for Hager. They received life sentences as a result of their testimony.
• Meier brown, while attempting to steal money orders worth $1175 from a Fleming post office, Georgia in 2002, fatally knifed postmistress Sallie Galglia 10 times, so she could not identify him. He then stole her wallet. Brown confessed his crime.
• Billie Jerome Allen and Norris Holder received sentences in 1998 for the armed robbery that led to the death of a security guard in St. Louis. The jury voted for the death penalty because “[Heflin] was already shot and wounded and Allen stood over him with an assault-rifle and shot Mr. Heflin again, execution style.” There is no doubt that Holder was involved in the crime. However, some have argued that Allen’s conviction is a case of mistaken identity (see Amnesty International, Prisons and Justice Initiative, www.freebillieallen.com, a Jan. 14 op-ed in The Nation, and a Jan. 16 op-ed by Allen himself in Newsweek). The evidence of Allen’s involvement is strong.
• David Runyon was an army veteran who, in 2007, shot five times to kill Cory Voss (a naval ensign) in a murder for hire plot orchestrated by Voss’ wife Catherina, and her boyfriend. Both received life sentences.

Murdering witnesses

Some were facing death for their involvement in the murder of a witness.

• Ronaldo Mikos was a Chicago foot surgeon who defrauded Medicare $1.8 million in foot surgeries he had never performed. He shot and killed Joyce Brannon, 53-year-old ex-nurse who lived in the church basement where she worked as a secretary. Mikos admitted to the fraud, but denied that he had killed Brannon. The circumstantial evidence was compelling .
• Len Davis was a corrupt New Orleans Police Officer who, in 1994, conspired with a drug dealer named Paul Hardy to kill Kim Groves for making a police brutality complaint against him. Davis mistook a young man for a suspect who was shot by a policeman. Groves witnessed the beating. Davis was unaware that the FBI had wiretapped his phone in as part of an sting operation to catch him and other cops extorting cocaine dealers for money. Hardy learned Davis’s orders from the phone surveillance. Groves died less than a week after she filed her complaint. Hardy shot Groves in the head with a single bullet.
• Rejon Tayler, with two accomplices, robbed and kidnapped Atlanta restaurant owner Guy Luck in 2003. They planned to rob the mailboxes and homes of wealthy Atlanta residents, including Luck. They returned to Luck’s house to search for valuables. Taylor found a document that said Luck planned to be a witness for Taylor. Taylor drove from Atlanta to rural Tennessee, forcing Luck into his van. Taylor shot Luck three times, once in the mouth and twice in the face, during a confrontation in the car.