By Jillian Kramer
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — Len Davis, a notoriously corrupt New Orleans police officer whose federal death sentence for the 1994 murder of Kim Groves was commuted last month to life in prison by President Joe Biden, is asking a judge to reinstate the death penalty that a jury leveled against him nearly three decades ago.
In a hand-written pleading filed last week in an Indiana federal court, Davis, 60, wrote that Biden was “forcing an unconstitutional life sentence” on him.
“Prisoner Davis did not request any commutation nor does he accept any commutation,” he wrote, without offering explicit reasons for why he was refusing clemency.
Biden on Dec. 23 commuted the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners, leaving just three people on federal death row. Davis and another man, 53-year-old Shannon Agofsky, are the only prisoners so far to file emergency injunctions seeking to block that life-sparing order. Both are housed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Agofsky wrote in his filing that by commuting his sentence, Biden would “strip him of the protection of heightened scrutiny” and “decimate his pending appellate procedures.”
In his filing, Davis wrote that he has “always maintained his innocence and argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights offenses.” Keeping his death sentence would help “draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” he claims prosecutors committed against him, Davis added.
A patrol officer known as the “Desire Terrorist,” Davis for years led a small ring of New Orleans officers pushing cocaine and providing cover to drug dealers, often inciting violence and falsifying evidence, according to prosecutors.
He was convicted in 1996 for ordering the murder of Groves, a 32-year-old mother of three who had accused Davis and his partner of brutally beating a young boy in her neighborhood.
Davis was sentenced to die by lethal injection. His death sentence was overturned in 1999, but a jury in 2005 resentenced him to the same fate.
A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling gives the president the power to commute the death sentences of federal prisoners.
“Mr. Davis’ consent is not required for the commutation of his death sentence to take effect,” Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said Tuesday. “The president’s power to commute the 37 federal death sentences is grounded in his constitutional authority and is absolute.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a division of the Justice Department that assists with clemency cases, did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday. Sarah Ottinger, Davis’ post-conviction attorney, also declined comment.
Davis epitomized a dark period for the New Orleans Police Department, one marked by corruption and rampant violence. Antoinette Frank, a former NOPD officer from the same era, remains on Louisiana’s death row.
The same year Davis ordered the death of Groves, authorities say, he also provided false information in another killing that led to the wrongful arrests and convictions of three men: Bernell Juluke , Kunta Gable and Leroy Nelson. In 2022, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams’ office secured their releases.
At the time, Williams’ office said it was undertaking a systemic review of criminal cases touched by Davis.
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