CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) -- Seven people sentenced to death in the Carolinas were among the more than three-dozen federal death row inmates to have their sentences commuted earlier this week.
The group who are now incarcerated with life sentences includes a gang leader, a kidnapper and a bank robber all convicted of murder in either North or South Carolina.
The family of bank teller Donna Major were quick to blast the commutations, which were ordered Dec. 23 by President Joe Biden. Brandon Council shot and killed Major and her co-worker during a robbery in Conway, South Carolina, in 2017. Major’s daughter, Katie Jenkins, spoke with Fox News.
“We trusted the judicial system, we sat through court, I watched my mom be murdered, I watched images of her body laying on the ground,” said Jenkins.
The commutations also included Alejandro Umana, a Charlotte man who is part of the gang MS-13. He was sentenced death in 2010 after being convicted of fatally shot two brothers in a Greensboro restaurant after they called Umana’s gang signs “fake.” During his trial, Umana attempted to bring a knife into the courtroom.
Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks are also among those with new sentences. After they escaped from a Kentucky prison, the pair kidnapped Alice Donovan from a South Carolina Walmart. Her family waited years before her remains were finally discovered.
Donovan’s daughter, Angie Gilchrist, spoke with Queen City News’ Jody Barr in 2008.
“I want to hear the words, ‘It’s Alice Donovan, it’s your mom.’” she told Barr. “Just so that I can finally release everything I have been holding inside for six years so that I can actually cry and mourn the loss of my mother.”
Trump tells 37 people with sentences commuted by Biden to ‘go to hell’ in lengthy Christmas postRichard Jackson will also be given a life sentence. He was on death row for raping and killing Karen Styles while she was out for a run in Pisgah National Forest.
In a statement, President Biden condemned the inmate’s crimes but said that his conscience guided him to his decision, “… I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Biden had issued a moratorium on most federal executions when he came into office.
Only three federal inmates remain on death row, they face either terrorism or mass murder convictions. That include the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, one of the Boston bombers, and Dylann Roof, the gunman who killed nine people at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015.
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