President Joe Biden on Monday morning commuted the sentences of 37 federal inmates on death row, including a Michigan man who in 1997 killed a 19-year-old woman who had accused him of rape.
Marvin Charles Gabrion II, 71, was convicted of murdering Rachel Timmerman and sentenced to death in 2002, making him the only Michigander on federal death row. Michigan’s state constitution prohibits the death penalty; the only other execution of a Michigan resident since it became a state was done by the federal government in 1938, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C.
In 1847, Michigan became the first English-speaking government to prohibit the death penalty.
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Gabrion was charged and sentenced by the federal government because Timmerman’s body was found in Oxford Lake, which is in Manistee National Forest in Newaygo County.
Timmerman, who was discovered by fishermen with duct tape wrapped around her face, her hands in handcuffs and her body weighted down by cinder blocks, disappeared days before Gabrion was scheduled to face trial on the rape allegation. Her 18-month-old daughter, Shannon, also disappeared and was never found. An appeals court that reconsidered Gabrion’s conviction and sentence found the evidence against him “overwhelming.”
Gabrion is being held at a federal facility in Missouri.
Biden, who imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty upon taking office in 2021, commuted the sentences of Gabrion and the other inmates sentenced to execution to life in prison. Biden will leave office on Jan. 20 as former President Donald Trump is inaugurated.
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Biden has said the U.S. should only use the death penalty at the federal level in cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. During his first term in office, Trump’s Justice Department resumed the use of federal executions after nearly two decades and he indicated during this year’s campaign that he would reimpose and possibly expand the use of the death penalty once reelected.
This month, Biden commuted the sentences of some 1,500 nonviolent federal inmates, including about three dozen who were initially processed in Michigan, allowing them to be released early.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Biden commutes death penalty sentence of Marvin Gabrion of Michigan
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