Biden commutes death sentences of seven people charged with crimes in Texas

Seven people charged with federal crimes in Texas are among those whose death sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden on Monday.

Biden commuted the sentences of 37 inmates — nearly all 40 people on federal death row — commuting their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The move comes weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has been an outspoken supporter of expanding the death penalty.

Many of the people Biden spared were convicted of murdering fellow inmates in Texas federal prisons. An Indiana prison houses death row inmates.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the federal government can seek death sentences for a limited number of crimes, but federal executions are rare. According to the center, 16 people have been executed since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, while Texas has executed more than 550 people during the same period.

The Eastern District Court of Texas, which handles cases from Sherman to Beaumont, has sentenced eight people to death – more than any other federal district court in the country, Death Penalty Information Center data shows.

Here’s what’s known about the Texas cases.

Shannon Wayne Agofsky — Missouri man Shannon Wayne Agofsky was sentenced to death for fatally beating Luther Plant, an inmate at the federal prison in Beaumont, according to court records. Agofsky, 53, was already serving a life sentence for robbing a Missouri bank with his brother. According to articles by The Dallas Morning News According to archives, the brothers kidnapped bank president Dan Short in October 1989 and forced him to open the bank. They stole more than $70,000, then drove to Oklahoma, where they tied Short to a cement-weighted chair and threw him into a lake IndyStar reported.

Christopher Cramer and Ricky Allen Fackrell — Utah men Christopher Cramer, 42, and Ricky Allen Fackrell, 40, were convicted of stabbing another white supremacist while in custody in Beaumont in 2014. Cramer and Fackrell planned for months to kill Leo Johns; According to a 2018 press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, all three men were members of the white supremacy group Soldiers of the Aryan Culture. Cramer and Fackrell were in prison for unrelated robberies involving firearms. the Associated Press reported.

Joseph Ebron — Joseph Ebron, 45, was convicted in 2009 of stabbing a fellow inmate, Keith Barnes, while the two were incarcerated at a Beaumont prison. According to an FBI press release at the time, the murder was filmed by surveillance cameras in the cell block in 2005.

When Ebron heard the verdict, he jumped up and began shouting obscenities before throwing a jug of water at one of the prosecutors. Accordingly, he was attacked by officers of the US Marshal Service Beaumont Enterprise.

Julius Omar Robinson — Julius Omar Robinson, 48, was sentenced to death in 2002 for killing two men. He was accused of killing the men as part of a drug trafficking scheme in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to court documents.

In 1998, Robinson shot Johnny Lee Shelton after mistaking him for someone he believed was responsible for an armed kidnapping that “cost him $30,000,” according to court documents.

Five months later, Robinson killed Juan Reyes in retaliation for a “fraudulent drug transaction” in which Robinson paid $17,000 for a block of wood covered with drywall, according to court documents.

Shelton and Reyes lived in Dallas. According to court documents, Robinson was also involved in “a wide-ranging conspiracy” that resulted in the murder of another man.

Mark Isaac Snarr and Edgar Garcia — Mark Isaac Snarr, 49, of Utah and Edgar Garcia, 45, of Abilene were convicted and sentenced to death after stabbing an inmate, Gabriel Rhone, and wounding two correctional officers at a Beaumont prison in November 2007.

Snarr and Garcia repeatedly stabbed Rhone, 31, with makeshift knives outside his cell, which was in a high-security unit at the prison Beaumont Enterprise. According to court documents, the men claimed, among other things, that they killed Rhone out of fear for her life.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.