The 37 federal death row inmates whose sentences have been commuted to life without parole include four men who committed their crimes in Missouri. Two of those men, Norris Holder and Billie Allen, were convicted of murdering a security guard in 1997 while robbing a bank in St. Louis.
Former federal prosecutor Ed Dowd, who worked the case, spoke with KMOX Radio in St. Louis. He said you would disagree if you heard the details of the killing.
“The two defendants walked into the Lindell Bank and Trust at High Point,” explained Dowd. “One had a Russian SKS assault rifle, the other one had a Chinese SKS assault rifle, and walked in and shot Richard Heflin, who was a very highly decorated Vietnam War hero, former police officer, and shot him eight times.”
Two juries found Holder and Allen guilty and, unanimously, chose the death penalty, said Dowd.
What is Dowd’s message to President Biden?
“I think he should have stayed out of it and let the juries and the judges that that heard these cases and actually knew what happened and how despicable the conduct has to be to get a death sentence,” he said. “He should have left it in the hands of the people that knew about the cases.”
Dowd said that he doesn’t understand why Biden commuted the sentences of all but three death row inmates — the Boston Marathon bomber, the Charleston church shooter, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.
Biden also commuted the death sentences of Wesley Coonce, Junior and Charles Hall, who were convicted of murdering an inmate at the federal medical prison in southwestern Missouri’s Springfield.
KMOX Radio in St. Louis contributed this report.
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