Biden reprieve for death-row police officer ‘morally depraved’ – prosecutor
Biden reprieve for death-row police officer ‘morally depraved’ – prosecutor
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Michael McMahon condemns president for commuting death sentence given to Len Davis, 60, over 1994 murder. Joe Biden was hypocritical – and “blindsided” the victim’s daughter – when in December he commuted the death sentence given to a corrupt former police officer after he orchestrated the murder of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him, according to the retired assistant US attorney whose job it was to prosecute the case.
In a guest column published on Friday by Louisiana’s Advocate newspaper, Michael McMahon said the clemency given to the ex-New Orleans policeman Len Davis was “morally depraved” – and not revealed to the family of Kim Groves, the slain woman, until virtually the last minute, all but violating US justice department policies designed to give victims’ loved ones a voice in such decisions.
“It is truly disappointing and shameful,” McMahon said. “I’m not being cynical; I’m being realistic.”. Many regard Groves’s killing as the reputational low point for the New Orleans police department, which since 2012 has been trying to achieve compliance on a reform pact – known as a consent decree – that the agency signed with the federal government after a civil rights investigation found decades of unconstitutional practices.
Groves had seen Davis pistol-whip a teenager in 1994, a year during which New Orleans registered its all-time high in killings: 424. She reported Davis to the police’s internal affairs division, and he was tipped off about Groves’s complaint within a day.
