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Following President Biden’s move to commute the sentences of 37 death row inmates, Sen. Joe ManchinIW.Va., called the pardons granted to the two individuals “horribly wrong and offensive.”
In 37 cases, Biden commuted the sentences to life without parole.
Manchin — a Democrat-turned-independent senator who will soon leave office — said he felt a responsibility to speak on behalf of the parents of Samantha Burns, who was killed in 2002 at the age of 19, according to reports.
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Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., speaks during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the special diabetes program on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, July 11, 2023. (Jemal Grofica/Getty Images for JDRF)
“After speaking with the parents of Samantha Burns, I believe it is my duty to speak on their behalf and say that President Biden’s decision to commute the death sentences of the two men convicted of her brutal murder is terribly wrong and offensive,” the lawmaker said in a statement posted on X .
“Especially since Samantha’s family wrote letters to President Biden and the Department of Justice, begging them not to do this, but their concerns went unheard. I can’t imagine the grief that Kandi and John Burns are reliving and carrying with her during the holiday season,” Manchin continued. . “As their US Senator and father, I want to express my deepest sympathy for their continued suffering. Please know that Samantha will forever be in our prayers.”
Brandon Basham is pictured after escaping from the Hopkins County Jail in Madisonville, Kentucky on November 4, 2002. He went on an interstate crime spree with fellow fugitive Chadrick Fulks that included the murders of two women. (Ashland Police/Getty Images)
Two men linked to the death of a young woman escaped from prison and went on a crime spree in 2002, according to US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
“On November 4, 2002, cellmates Chadrick Fulks and Brandon Basham escaped from the Kentucky County Detention Center” and “launched a seventeen-day crime spree that spanned several states,” according to the court, which noted that men “admitted to killing Burns and pleaded guilty to carjacking resulting in death in the Southern District of West Virginia.”
U.S. Marshals escort Chadrick Fulks out of the federal courthouse in Huntington, West Virginia, April 12, 2005, after being arraigned on charges of carjacking that resulted in the death of Marshall University student Samantha Burns, use of a firearm in the commission of a crime and interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle. (AP Photo/The Herald-Dispatch, Randy Snyder)
In a fiery Christmas post on Truth Social, the president-elect Trump he told 37 people who escaped the death penalty “GO TO HELL!”
In the statement of changes, President Biden said: “I condemn these killers, mourn the victims of their despicable acts and grieve for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.”
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President Biden speaks at the Department of Labor in Washington, DC on December 16. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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But he also said he is “more convinced than ever that we must stop the death penalty at the federal level.”
“These changes are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said.
