Biden commutes death sentences of seven charged with crimes in Texas

Most of the people on federal death row had their death sentences converted to life in prison Monday.

By Maggie Prosser and Chase Rogers
Staff Writers

Seven people charged with 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 — converting their punishments to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The move comes weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, who is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.

A slew of the people spared by Biden were convicted of killing fellow inmates in Texas federal prisons. Death row inmates are housed at an Indiana prison.

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

Texas’ eastern district court, which handles cases from Sherman to Beaumont, has sentenced eight people to death — more than any other federal district court nationwide — the 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 beating Luther Plant, an inmate at the federal penitentiary in Beaumont, according to court records. Agofsky, 53, was already serving life in prison for robbing a Missouri bank with his brother. According to articles from The Dallas Morning News’ archives, the brothers kidnapped the bank president, Dan Short, in October 1989 and forced him to open the bank. They stole more than $70,000 then drove to Oklahoma, where they tied Short to a cement-weighted chair and threw him into a lake, theIndianapolis Star reported.

Christopher Cramer and Ricky Allen Fackrell — Utah men Christopher Cramer, 42, and Ricky Allen Fackrell, 40, were convicted of stabbing a fellow white supremacist to death in 2014 while imprisoned in Beaumont. Cramer and Fackrell plotted for months to kill Leo Johns; all three men were members of the white supremacy group Soldiers of the Aryan Culture, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release from 2018. Cramer and Fackrell were serving time for unrelated robberies in which firearms were used,The Associated Press reported.

Joseph Ebron — Joseph Ebron, 45, was condemned in 2009 for stabbing a fellow inmate, Keith Barnes, to death while the two were incarcerated in a Beaumont prison. The 2005 killing was captured by surveillance cameras inside the cell block, according to an FBI news release at the time.

Upon hearing the verdict, Ebron leapt to his feet and began screaming obscenities before tossing a water pitcher toward one of the prosecutors. He was tackled by U.S. Marshal Service officials, according to the 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 hijacking 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 sheetrock, according to court records.

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

Mark Isaac Snarr and Edgar Balthazar Garcia — Mark Isaac Snarr, 49, of Utah and Edgar Balthazar Garcia, 45, of Abilene were convicted and sentenced to death after stabbing fellow inmate Gabriel Rhone to death and injuring two correctional officers while in a Beaumont prison in November 2007.

Snarr and Garcia repeatedly stabbed Rhone, 31, with makeshift knives outside of his cell, which was in a maximum-security unit in the prison, according to the 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.

This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.