Death Penalty Killed, Prisoners Left To Lives Of Violence And Despair
Working out in the 15-by-20-foot exercise cage was common for many of the 1,036 prisoners at the federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
For many, it was much more than a time for physical exercise, it was a place where rival prisoners and gangs could get revenge and release their seething and sometimes deadly anger. The prisoners and guards call the perverse, brutal cage the “thunder dome” or “gladiator school.”
On Jan. 5, 2001, Shannon Wayne Agofsky, 30, and Luther Kenneth “Tootie” Plant, 37, were having at it in the thunder dome. Plant, a heroin addict, was serving a 15-year sentence at the time of his death for felony possession of a firearm and arson related to the 1987 burning of a Texas nightclub.
Plant was no match for the larger Agofsky who was an expert in the Korean martial arts practice Hwa Rang Do, also known as “The Way of the Flowering Knights.” A video recorded by a prison guard showed how Plant was savagely beaten and stomped to death by Agofsky.
Plant’s death was the fourth murder at the Federal Correction Complex in Beaumont since March 1997.
About two minutes after the beating, prison officials pulled Plant out of the cage. He was pronounced dead less than two hours later after suffering ka crushed neck, large abrasions, hemorrhaging around both eyes, a broken nose and jaw, lacerations, broken teeth and various internal injuries.
At the time of the beating, Agofsky, now 50, was a member of the Sons of the Noblewolf Kindred, a white supremacist group. Agofsky was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. He and his brother, Joseph, were already serving life sentences for murder and robbing $70,000 from the State Bank of Noel, Mo., on Oct. 6, 1989. The brothers kidnapped bank president Dan Short, forced him to open the bank safe then duct taped Short to a chair, which they weighted down with chains and a concrete block, before tossing Short into a lake, where he drowned.
Joseph Agofsky escaped his fate when he died on March 5, 2013. He was 46.
Executions Halted
Shannon Agofsky will not be executed because he was among 36 death row prisoners whose sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden to life imprisonment without parole. Biden left intact the death sentences for three highly publicized prisoners involved in terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders.
The argument over the death penalty is ultimately perverse. It is a decision over whether the most violent prisoners be executed or be forced to live out their lives in the violent confines of a federal prison
Advocates for abolition of the death penalty argue that the death penalty is a violation of human rights, particularly the right to life and the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Human rights and life in prison are oxymoronic and it is hardly humane to allow tortured people like Agofsky to live in purgatory while they waste away in a brutal prison along with thousands of other violent and often mentally ill prisoners.
Supporters of capitol punishment often point to the need for moral retribution, arguing that the death penalty is a just punishment for the most heinous crimes. For many prisoners, however, death would be far more welcomed than life in prison.
The opinions of Americans are mixed. A Gallup survey last October found that 55 percent of Americans find the death penalty “morally acceptable.” Around 53 percent favors its actual imposition.
Of the 37 men whose sentences Biden commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that have abolished the death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing fellow federal prisoners.
The three men whose sentences Biden did not commute and can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.
Perhaps the final decision should be left to the prisoner. Mercy killings are allowed; why not give prisoners the same option.
Among those who were spared execution here are a few of their stories.
Shannon Wayne Agofsky
In a letter presented during Agofsky’s trial for killing Plant, the bank president, Agofsky wrote that “All I do is work out, wait to leave and hope the cops mess up and let me around some other scumbag so I can test out my hand!”
Both natives of the tiny town of Noel, Joe Agofsky, then 23, and his brother, Shannon, then 18, were found guilty of the bank robbery and the murder of 51-year-old Dan Short, who lived alone in nearby rural Benton County, Ark. Short, a divorced father of two children, was active in community affairs, serving as master of ceremonies of Noel’s Christmas parade for three years. He also did commentary on radio broadcasts of high school sporting events and wrote a weekly sports column for an area newspaper.
Investigators at first considered Short a possible suspect in a money laundering scheme, until October 11, 1989, when fishermen found his body floating in Grand Lake, near Cowskin Bridge in Ottawa County, Okla., about 20 miles from the bank robbery. Short was still bound by duct tape to a chair weighted with a concrete block and chain hoist used to lift and lower heavy loads. Officials found a driver’s license belonging to Short inside his clothing.
Authorities were led to the Agofskys after witnesses said the siblings had been seen bragging about being well-off and that they had stolen a large amount of coins. One witness said she saw two men throwing something off the Cowskin Bridge.
Authorities said the brothers had received substantial settlements after their father, Joseph Anthony Agofsky, was 37 when he was killed on March 8, 1980, when his twin engine plane crashed near Victoria, Mexico. The funds had been used up and the brothers got involved in running guns to make cash.
Len Davis
Another life spared was that of Len Davis, a former New Orleans, La., police officer who was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death for ordering the murder of Kim Groves, a 32-year-old woman who had filed a brutality complaint after seeing Davis pistol whip a neighborhood teen.
Davis hired a trigger man, drug dealer, Paul “Cool” Hardy, to kill Groves. Hardy pleaded guilty and is serving life behind bars.
Davis had protected low-level drug dealers like Hardy and later started a police officer-based protection racket for dealers, who turned out to be undercover federal agents. Davis’s conviction, the result of an FBI sting called “Operation Shattered Shield,” capped the criminal life of one of the most corrupt cops in U.S. history.
Groves had been with friends when she walking home at 9:55 p.m., Oct. 13, 1994. She was a block from her home, when Hardy approached, raised a 9mm pistol and shot her once in the left side of the head. Groves’ children rushed outside and found their mother lying in a pool of blood.
“I found my mother lying in the street, dying from a bullet wound to the head,” Groves’ son, Corey Groves, told the court. “I cried while calling my mother’s name. I clearly remember seeing both of her eyes rapidly moving from side to side, and then very suddenly they stopped. At that time, I knew she was gone.”
Davis was known in the community as “RoboCop” because of his large size and as the “Desire Terrorist” because of his aggressive policing style. He had been suspended six times and received 20 complaints between 1987 and 1992, while subsequently receiving the department’s Medal of Merit in 1993.
In 1994, an FBI sting caught Davis enforcing a protection racket upon the city’s cocaine dealers. Davis had extorted protection money from a drug dealer who was an FBI informant. Nine other police officers, including two who would later testify against Davis, were later indicted for being part of a criminal conspiracy with Davis. Twenty additional New Orleans police officers were also implicated in the scheme, but the investigation was halted because of the murder of Kim Groves. Davis was later convicted of additional drug-related charges, while the other officers pleaded guilty.
In 1994, Davis beat a young man in New Orleans, mistaking him for a suspect in a police officer’s shooting. Groves, a 32-year-old area resident and mother of three young children, witnessed the assault and filed a complaint with the New Orleans Police Department.
Davis was tipped off about the complaint by another officer and then conspired with local drug dealer Hardy to kill Groves. Hardy shot and killed her on October 14, 1994, less than a day after she filed the complaint.
Davis was convicted in 1996 on two federal civil rights charges for directing Hardy to murder Groves and for witness tampering. Davis was initially sentenced to death on April 26, 1996. Davis is currently imprisoned at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.
Hardy was convicted of conspiracy to violate Groves’ civil rights and of witness tampering. Hardy was initially sentenced to death, but in 2011, his sentence was commuted to life when judge found him to be intellectually disabled.
In 2018, nearly 24 years after the killing, the city of New Orleans agreed to pay Groves’ three children $1.5 million.
Groves’ son, Corey, and his sister, Jasmine, were both 12 when their mother died. Their sister Stephanie Groves was 16. Corey Groves is married with five children. After his mother’s murder, he said he fell into a life of drug abuse, prison and dark thoughts.
“I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died,” Groves said. “I desperately wanted to get stopped by an NOPD officer so I could either kill one of them or force one of them to kill me. This is how angry, hurt and confused I was after the murder of my mother.”
In unrelated cases, in October 2022, after 28 years in prison, three men who were wrongfully convicted of murder based on false testimony from Davis, were released. In December 2022, another man who was also convicted based on false testimony from Davis was released from prison after imprisonment of more than 30 years.
Edward Fields Jr.
Edward Leon Fields Jr. is a 53-year-old former prison guard who was sentenced to death for stalking, killing and robbing a married couple from Texas on federal land.
Fields, who had no prior criminal record, dressed up in camouflage and stalked Charles Chick, 47, and his wife, Shirley Chick, 50, for three days before shooting and killing them on July 10, 2003, at the campsite in the Ouachita National Forest in Oden, Ariz. Fields admitted to killing the campers in order to rob them and take items from their campsite.
Fields had been living in his truck at the forest’s campsites for days leading up to the slayings. He had previously lived with a woman who told him to leave.
Fields donned a home-made gilly suit, made of hundreds of pieces of rope and long strips of yarn and burlap, designed to camouflage from head to foot. He retrieved his camouflage-covered rifle from his truck and hid behind a tree. When the Chicks returned to their picnic table, he crept and shot Charles Chick once in the head. Hearing the shot, Shirley Chick, 50, ran toward their van, but Fields shot her in the foot, then ran closer and shot her in the head as she crawled inside the van’s passenger door.
Fields told Graff he went back to the picnic table, where he heard Charles Chick still breathing, so he shot him once more in the head.
Fields said he stole $40 and a credit card from the husband’s body and $300 from the wife’s purse. After the shooting, Fields told a friend that he had “done something real bad.” The day after the murders, Fields went on a shopping spree with the victims’ credit cards and bought an engagement ring among other things.
The bodies were found the day after the killing at the campsite in the 1.8 million-acre forest that stretches from LeFlore County to several counties in western Arkansas.
At the time of sentencing, Fields said he had suffered from depression for many years.
The Chicks had been married about 20 years and had moved to Hurst from Detroit, Mich. Charles Chick worked for Lockheed-Martin, and Shirley Chick was a free-lance computer programmer.
Fields worked for the state Department of Corrections for four years in the 1990s. He was a guard at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester from 1995 to 1996. He then moved to the Hamilton Correctional Center in Hodgen as a food-service supervisor and a guard before resigning from the DOC in 1999.
Jurijus Kadamovas and Louri Mikhel
Jurijus Kadamovas, 58, and Louri Gherman Mikhel, 59, are serial killers who became U.S. citizens after they immigrated to the United States from Lithuania and Russia, respectively. They were convicted of kidnapping and murdering five people over a four-month period beginning in late 2001. They had demanded a total of more than $5.5 million in ransom from relatives and associates and received more than $1 million.
The victims were killed regardless of whether the ransoms were paid. The bodies were tied with weights, and dumped in the New Melones Lake near Yosemite National Park.
On March 12, 2007, Kadamovas and Mikhel were sentenced to death. Four others were sentenced for participating in the plot, receiving sentences ranging from 11 years to life imprisonment.
Kadamovas and Mikhel lived in the San Fernando Valley in California. They owned a joint business called Designed Water World, a fish aquarium store. In October 2001, the friends decided to kidnap 58-year-old Meyer Muscatel, a local real-estate developer. Muscatel was lured to Mikhel’s house where Muscatel was handcuffed, duct-taped and pistol whipped. His wallet and credit cards were taken and he was then questioned about his finances. Muscatel was then injected with the antihistamine diphenhydramine and pinned to the ground. Mikhel placed a plastic bag over Muscatel’s head and suffocated him to death.
The next target was 37-year-old George Safiev, a wealthy Russian businessman who lived in Beverly Hills. In December 2001, Kadamovas and Mikhel lured Safiev’s financial advisor, who was pregnant at the time, to Safiev’s home.
When the advisor arrived, Mikhel restrained her and ordered her to contact Safiev. She made contact but Safiev told her he was too busy to meet. The advisor was then injected with diphenhydramine and strangled to death.
A third victim was 35-year-old, auto shop owner, Alexander Umansky. In December 2001, Mikhel posed as a customer and lured Umansky to a home where he was held captive for three days and was forced to call his brother and beg for money to secure his release.
Kadamovas and Mikhel also sent the Umansky family a ransom note demanding nearly $235,000. After receiving the money, Kadamovas and Mikhel duct-taped Umansky’s mouth shut and placed a bag over his head, while Kadamovas pinned him down and pinched his nose shut. They then twisted a rope around his neck and strangled him to death from behind.
Two more victims were ultimately murdered.
Kadamovas and Mikhel were subsequently arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death.
Thomas “Spider” Sanders
Another commutation was given to Thomas Sanders, 57, of Las Vegas, for kidnapping and killing 12-year-old girl Lexis Roberts and her mother, Suellen Roberts, 31, in 2010.
Sanders met the Suellen Roberts, 31, that summer at a warehouse in Las Vegas where she worked. They began dating and decided to go on a road trip together over Labor Day weekend.
After three days of traveling, Sanders pulled off Interstate 40 to a remote location in the Arizona desert where he shot the mother in the head and forced the daughter into the car. He drove for several days across the country before killing the 12-year-old in a wooded area in Catahoula Parish, La.
Sanders’ wife had filed for divorce in 1988 for alleged “habitual, cruel and inhuman treatment.” Sanders had been declared legally dead in 1994 after he left his family and was not seen again. After being declared legally dead, Sanders became a drifter, moving through Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia and Nevada. He was arrested on Nov. 14, 2010, at a truck stop in Gulfport, Miss. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Brandon Michel Council
Biden also commuted the sentence of Brandon Michel Council, 35, who killed two longtime bank tellers, Katie Skeen, 36, and Donna Major, 59, on Aug. 21, 2017, before robbing $15,000 from the CresCom Bank in Conway, S.C.
Jurors heard testimony about Council’s broken family life where he was subjected to physical and sexual abuse and his history of drug use. Council also had spent time spent at a behavioral institution, where he was subjected to abuse by staff members.
Council entered the bank around 1:10 p.m. and approached Major to cash a check. He then pulled out a gun and shot the woman, who was working on her computer. She stumbled backward, and Council reached over the counter, grabber her and shot her again.
Council then went to Skeen’s office and found her hiding under her desk. He held his gun to her head, said “I’m sorry” and shot her twice. Council returned to the front of the bank and shot Major a third time, killing her. He stole Skeen’s wallet and car keys, which he used to flee in her car after he robbed the bank.
At the time, Council also was wanted for robbing the BB&T branch at 1604 S. Tarboro St. in Wilson, N.C., on Aug. 10