“Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?”

The title of this post is the headline of this interesting new piece at The Intercept by Liliana Segura.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”  Taylor saw new signs of life all around him.  Biden had granted clemency to 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, an unprecedented move that none of them expected….

Yet not everyone was eager for a new beginning. Within days of the announcement, two men had sent handwritten emergency petitions to a federal court in Indiana seeking to block the commutation of their death sentences. Neither of them had applied for clemency and both were adamant that they did not want it, arguing that it threatened to derail their efforts to prove their innocence in court. One of them decried Biden’s commutations as a “publicity stunt.” This week a third man, Iouri Mikhel, similarly objected to Biden’s reprieve.

The challenges are a long shot to say the least.  “The Court harbors serious doubt that it has any power to block a commutation,” a federal judge wrote in response to the first two filings.  But the lawsuits also lay bare a sobering reality for most people who go from facing a death sentence to a life sentence with no chance of release.  While people on death row are automatically entitled to legal representation, those serving life without parole are not.  And for those who harbor even the faintest hope of overturning their convictions, a commutation can foreclose on legal avenues that once made it possible.  This is true even for those who do not claim to be innocent but have challenged their convictions on other grounds, from ineffective advocacy by trial lawyers to racial bias to official misconduct.

With Taylor and his neighbors facing a lifetime behind bars — and with more questions than answers about what will happen next — the mood in Terre Haute has shifted.  The initial wave of celebration has given way to anxiety over the future.  Rumors have run rampant about the upcoming prison transfers; some days the men hear they will happen imminently, only to be told that it could be a while.  Many are nervous about living in general population after years or even decades in solitary confinement.