Two federal death row inmates seeking to reject Biden's commutation as they press innocence claims

As reported in this notable new NBC News piece,  "[t]wo prisoners who are among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted last month by President Joe Biden — a move that spares them from the death chamber — have taken an unusual stance: They're refusing to sign paperwork accepting his clemency action."  Here is more:

Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions in federal court in the state's southern district on Dec. 30 seeking an injunction to block having their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole. The men believe that having their sentences commuted would put them at a legal disadvantage as they seek to appeal their cases based on claims of innocence.....

"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,” according to Agofsky's filing.

Davis wrote in his filing that he "has always maintained that having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct" he alleges against the Justice Department. He also wrote that he "thanks court for its prompt attention to this fast-moving constitutional conundrum. The case law on this issue is quite murky."

But inmates face a daunting challenge in having their death sentences restored, said Dan Kobil, a professor of constitutional law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, who has represented defendants in death penalty and clemency cases.  A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, for example, maintains that a president has the power to grant reprieves and pardons, and "the convict's consent is not required."...

In his filing seeking an injunction for Biden's commutation, Agofsky, 53, said that he is disputing how he was charged with murder in the stomping death and that he is also trying to "establish his innocence in the original case for which he was incarcerated."...  Davis, 60, "has always maintained his innocence and argued that federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights offenses," his filing says.  Both Davis and Agofsky are asking a judge to appoint a co-counsel in their requests for an injunction of the commutations.

If nothing else, these efforts to refuse a capital commutation seem likely to help ensure these defendants get more attention for their claims of innocence than many others.  And I have often asserted to students in my sentencing classes that convicted murderers claiming to be wrongfully convicted on death row are likely to get more attention for their claims of innocence than convicted murderers given LWOP.  These two defendants certainly seem to agree with this assertion.