The family of a South Carolina bank teller killed during a robbery in 2017 is furious after President Biden commuted her killer’s death sentence just days before Christmas.
Now Donna Major’s family is in trouble during the holiday season, troubled by the news that a convicted criminal was shown the mercy he refused to show others.
“I was angry. I am still angry. I’m disturbed that this is even happening, that a man is doing this without talking to the victims, without caring about what we’re going through, and just being completely hurt, disappointed and angry. He can come and make that decision,” Major’s daughter, Heather Turner, said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”
“No mercy was shown to him at all. This man came to the bank, did not even speak two words to him. Shot him a total of three times. He went and also shot his co-worker Katie Skeen, who was completely defenseless and unaware of anything happening,” Major’s husband Danny Jenkins said during the show.
“I can’t believe this is really happening…”
Career criminal Brandon Council was among 37 inmates whose federal death sentence was commuted to life in prison by President Biden earlier this week.
Surveillance video of the 2017 double murder shows Council going to the Crescom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, walking up to Major and talking to him briefly before pulling out a gun and shooting him multiple times.
He then jumped over the counter and opened fire on 36-year-old Taylor Katherine Skeen, killing her as well.
President Biden addresses commutation in a statementsaying, “I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole. These deficiencies are consistent with my Administration’s moratorium on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, mourn the victims of their despicable acts, and grieve for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.
“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, 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 step back and allow the new administration to resume actions that I had stopped.”
“Squad” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., praised the decision Monday on CNN as a display of “moral” and “compassionate” leadership, and argued that the death penalty “has not been proven to be a deterrent to crime.”
“Compassion? I don’t think it’s compassion,” Katie Jenkins, who is also Major’s daughter, responded Tuesday.
“The fact that he (Biden) did not speak to any of the victims of this crime… We trusted the judicial system. We sat in the court. I saw my mother being murdered. I saw pictures of his body lying on the ground. There is no mercy in him. For whom? A criminal? No, I do not agree with this. I don’t agree with this at all.”
Turner said the family heard in May that commutation might be a possibility and began writing letters to the pardon attorney requesting an in-person meeting in Washington, DC.
“We were refused,” she said. “They denied our right to have our voices heard. we suffer. My mother was murdered at the hands of Brandon Council. They should have heard our story. And we only got a 10-minute virtual conference and clearly no attention was paid to it. They didn’t want to hear our story.”
The only federal death row inmates excluded from Biden’s sentencing were Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers and Dylann Roof, who was responsible for the killing of nine African Americans at a Charleston church in 2015.
(TagstoTranslate)Politics(T)US News(T)Joe Biden(T)Murder(T)Pardon
