It’s ‘an injustice’ family of murdered SC women says of decision to commute death sentence
The families two women shot during a bank robbery in 2017 are speaking out against Biden’s commute of the convicted murderer’s sentence.
The decision to commute 37 death row inmates’ sentences come days before Christmas.
Brandon Council was sentenced to death row after he was found guilty of murdering Donna Major, 59, and Katie Skeen, 36, in 2017. The women worked at CresCom, a Conway bank where Council robbed and shot the two women.
Biden commuted Council’s sentence from the death penalty to life in prison, according to an announcement from the White House on Dec. 22, 2024. The White House said that Biden believes the death penalty at the federal level “must stop,” except for people found guilty of terrorism and mass murder motivated by hate.
Derek A. Shoemake was one of three federal prosecutors involved in the conviction of Council. Shoemake, who is no longer with the U.S. Attorneys Office, said Monday that he was surprised to hear of Biden’s decision. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be true,” he said.
Family members of both Major and Skeen contacted Shoemake about the president’s decision. Their reactions were both a “prevailing sense of shock and disappointment,” which is valid, Shoemake said.
Betty Richardson Davis, Skeen’s mother, told The Sun News Monday that Council’s death penalty being taken away “is an injustice.”
Daniel Major, Donna Major’s husband, said he feels Biden exploited his power by commuting Council’s sentence.
“I am totally disappointed in our justice system,” Daniel Major said. “The fact that the senile president has the power and the authority just disregard justice system, it’s a complete abuse of power.”
For Shoemake, Biden’s decision raises the question of why there are other death penalty sentences that remain.
“They picked, they chose which ones would be commuted and which ones would not,” Shoemake said. “That’s hard for the victims’ families to swallow.”
It tells the family members that some death penalties are OK, and some are not, and that the loss they suffered is not of importance, Shoemake said.
Prosecutors spent a year working on the case, which resulted in Council’s conviction in 2019. Shoemake remembers sitting with the family after every day of the trial, “and just getting a chance to be with these family members and watch them go through this process and realize the pain that they are going through.”
Daniel Major and his daughter Heather Turner said they remember spending weeks in court going over Major’s death.
“You don’t unsee the graphic images we were shown,” Turner said in a social media post.
It was a senseless crime, which makes it difficult to process the White House’s decision and only “increases the heinousness of this crime,” Shoemake said.
“It is also difficult to know that the Skeen and Major families will celebrate yet another Christmas without their loved ones,” he said in a statement.
Richardson Davis said she cannot truly explain how she’s feeling or else she won’t be able to function for Christmas.
Major and Skeen are remembered as wonderful women and mothers. Since her death, Major has missed the birth of multiple grandchildren.
“(The family) are the ones that are going to have to live with (the loss) every day, as well as this decision,” Shoemake said.
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 12:02 PM.
