The family of a South Carolina bank teller gunned down during a 2017 robbery is livid after President Biden commuted her killer’s death sentence just days before Christmas.
Now Donna Major’s family is left reeling through the holiday season, rattled by the news that the convicted criminal had been shown the mercy he refused to show others.
“I was angry. I’m still angry. I am upset that this is even happening, that one man can make this decision without even talking to the victims, without any regard for what we’ve been through, what we’re going through, and completely hurt, frustrated and angry,” Major’s daughter Heather Turner said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”
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“She was shown no mercy at all. This man walked into the bank, never said two words to her. Shot her three times in total. He went and shot her coworker, Katie Skeen as well, who was totally defenseless and unaware of anything happening,” Major’s husband, Danny Jenkins, added during the show.
“I can’t even believe that this is actually happening…”
Career criminal Brandon Council was among 37 inmates whose federal death row sentence was commuted to life in prison by President Biden earlier this week.
Surveillance video from the 2017 double murder shows Council walking into CresCom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, approach Major and speak to her briefly before pulling out a gun and shooting her multiple times.
He then leapt over the counter and opened fire on 36-year-old teller Kathryn Skeen, killing her as well.
President Biden addressed the commutations in a statement, saying, “I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache 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 stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
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“Squad” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., praised the decision as a show of “moral” and “compassionate” leadership on CNN Monday, arguing the death penalty “has not been proven to be a deterrent to crime.”
“Compassion? I don’t think that that’s compassion,” Katie Jenkins, also Major’s daughter, responded Tuesday.
“The fact that he [Biden] didn’t talk to any of us, the victims of this crime… we trusted the judicial system. We sat through court. I watched my mother be murdered. I watched images of her body laying on the ground. He doesn’t have compassion. For who? A criminal? No, I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with that at all.”
Turner said the family heard back in May that a commutation could be a possibility and began writing letters to the pardon attorney requesting an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C.
“We were refused,” she said. “They denied our right to have our voices heard. We’re victims. My mother was murdered at the hands of Brandon Council. They should have heard our story. And all we got was a 10-minute virtual conference and clearly that fell on deaf ears. They did not want to hear our story.”
The only federal death row inmates excluded from Biden’s commutations were Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers and Dylan Roof, who was responsible for killing nine African Americans at a Charleston church in 2015.
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