Biden commutes the death sentences of 7 accused of crimes in Texas

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

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

A number of the people spared by Biden were convicted of killing other inmates in Texas federal prisons. Death row inmates are housed in a prison in Indiana.

The federal government can seek death sentences for a limited number of crimes, but federal executions are rare, according to Death Penalty Information Center. Sixteen people have been executed since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, while Texas has executed more than 550 people in the same periodaccording to the center’s data.

Eastern District Court of Texaswhich hears 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‘s 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 struck Luther Plantan inmate at the federal prison in Beaumont, according to court records. Agofsky, 53, was already serving a life sentence for robbing a bank in Missouri with his brother. According to articles from Dallas Morning News’ file, the brothers kidnapped the bank president, Dan Shortin October 1989 and forced him to open the bank. They stole more than $70,000 and then drove to Oklahoma, where they tied Short to a cement-weighted chair and dumped him in 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 to death in 2014 while incarcerated in Beaumont. Cramer and Fackrell plotted for months to kill Leo Johns; all three men were members of the white supremacist group, Soldiers of the Aryan Culture, according to a 2018 press release from the US Department of Justice. Cramer and Fackrell served time for unrelated robberies in which a firearm was used, It was reported by the Associated Press.

Joseph Ebron – Joseph Ebron, 45, was convicted in 2009 of stabbing fellow inmate Keith Barnes to death while the two were incarcerated at a Beaumont jail. The 2005 killing was captured by surveillance cameras inside the cell block, according to a FBI news release then.

When Ebron heard the sentence, he jumped up and started screaming obscenities before throwing a water jug ​​at one of the accusers. He was tackled by US Marshal Service officials, according to 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 running a drug trafficking scheme in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to court records.

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

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 in flagstone, according to court records.

Shelton and Reyes lived in Dallas. Robinson was also involved “in a broad conspiracy” that led to the killing of another man, according to court records.

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 to death a fellow inmate, Gabriel Rhone, and injuring two corrections officers while at a Beaumont prison in November 2007.

Snarr and Garcia repeatedly stabbed Rhone, 31, with makeshift knives outside his cell, which was in a maximum-security unit of the jail, according to Beaumont Enterprise. The men claimed, among other things, that they killed Rhone out of fear for their lives, according to court records.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.