XPost: alt.activism.death-penalty, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.society.liberalism, alt.fan.states.south-carolina   
   From: nospam@ix.netcom.com   
      
   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   
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   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-DOS v1.05   
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