Paar accused the 2002 murder of a Marshall student and had death sentences commuted as part of Biden’s announcement

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two escaped inmates accused of the 2002 killing of a Marshall University student were on President Biden’s list of death row inmates commuted.

Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks will spend the rest of their lives in prison rather than receive the death penalty after President Biden made the decision Monday to relocate 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates. This announcement comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Basham and Fulks, who recently escaped from a prison in Hopkins County, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and killing 19-year-old Samatha Burns, a Marshall student who went missing on November 11, 2002, after she was last seen at the Huntington Mall. According to investigators, Burns’ car was found ablaze in a remote part of Wayne County. Burns’ remains were never found.

The duo was also convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Alice Donovan, a resident of Galivants Ferry, South Carolina. The couple killed Donovan after kidnapping her in the Walmart parking lot in Conway, South Carolina, shortly after escaping from prison. Basham and Fulks were on death row for Donovan’s murder.

With President Biden’s decision, there are only three people left on death row in the United States, and those inmates are as follows:

Dylann Roof, the gunman in the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that left nine black members of the church dead.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two bombers in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that left six people dead and hundreds seriously injured.

Robert Bowers, the gunman in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh that killed 11 congregants.