XPost: alt.activism.death-penalty, sac.politics, alt.war.civil.usa
XPost: alt.society.liberalism, alt.fan.states.south-carolina

FLORENCE, S.C. (WBTW) — After having his death sentence commuted to life
by President Joe Biden, Brandon Council is now asking for a compassionate release, according to a motion filed in federal court on Friday.

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/KDTs1TYB65ODIhN5XJua3w-- /YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTU4Mw-- /https://media.zenfs.com/en/wbtw_myrtle_beach_articles_325/0fa17a5e6a7b82c 26b0f866a6c6411f6
Donna Major (left) and Katie Skeen (right)

Council was convicted in September 2019 in the 2017 double murders of
Crescom Bank employees Donna Major and Katie Skeen after a three-week
trial. The next month in federal court, he was sentenced to death. Council
was among 37 federal inmates on death row who had their sentences commuted
to life on Monday.

In the motion, filed Friday in US District Court in Florence, Council
argues for a compassionate release because he’s been subjected to “severe, unnecessary, and unjustifiable psychological harm” that “can only be
accurately construed and assimilated as an act of torture” since he was permanently housed to solitary confinement on Nov. 4, 2019.

According to the Journal of Ethics, compassionate release is a form of
early release for seriously ill or disabled patients who are incarcerated. Compassionate release policies are designed in recognition that
appropriate care for patients with debilitating illnesses is difficult and
in some cases impossible while the person is in prison.

“The petitioner’s subjection to torture is the subsequent result of the petitioner’s sentence to death, however, the additional punishment of
solitary confinement which is the cause of the psychological harm is in no manner statutorily authorized, mandated, or required by the petitioner’s sentence to death,” the motion reads. “Within the jurisdiction of the
United States it is both illegal and unconstitutional to inflict or
subject any person to torture as a punitive consequence for a crime a
party has been duly convicted of.”

About a month after he was sentenced to death, Council asked for a new sentencing trial based on contradictory statements regarding Council’s
motives. A judge denied that request in December 2019.

The motion further argues that Council requested to be transferred to a non-psychologically harmful institution within the Bureau of Prisons but
was denied and remains in “psychologically harmful” conditions of solitary confinement. It claims Council’s allegation of subjection to torture was
never denied or legally disproven.

Major and Skeen’s deaths shook the community. Just before Skeen was killed
at 36, Pastor David Lyle says she had started a foundation called Miles
for Miles in memory of Pastor Kenneth Davis’ son, who was also shot and
killed in October 2016.

“She was instrumental and very passionate about having a place for
troubled teens to come and to get help and get straightened out and moved
in the right direction, and we believe that legacy and that light she
started is going to live on,” Lyle said.

Several people disagreed with Biden’s commutation decision, including US
Rep. Russell Fry, R-7th District, who said it “disgraces victims’ memories nationwide.”

Biden did not commute the sentences of three others on death row — Dylann
Roof, convicted of the 2015 killings of nine Black members of a Charleston church; the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev; and Robert
Bowers, who shot and killed 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history,
according to the Associated Press.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/convicted-conway-bank-killer-asks-
004110746.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)