CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A pair of escaped inmates accused in the 2002 killing of a Marshall University student were part of President Biden’s list of commuted death row inmates.
Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks will spend the rest of their lives in jail as opposed to receiving the death penalty after President Biden made the decision to commute 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates Monday. This announcement coming just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Basham and Fulks, who had recently escaped a Hopkins County, Kentucky jail, pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and killing of Samatha Burns, 19, a Marshall student who went missing on November 11, 2002, after last being seen at the Huntington Mall. According to investigators, Burns’ car was found in a secluded part of Wayne County on fire. Burns’ remains were never found.
The duo was also convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Alice Donovan, a Galivants Ferry, South Carolina resident. The pair killed Donovan after kidnapping her in the parking lot of the Walmart in Conway, South Carolina, not long after the prison escape. Basham and Fulks were on death row for the killing of Donovan.
With President Biden’s decision, just three people are on death row in the United States, and those inmates are as follows:
- Dylann Roof, the shooter in the 2015 mass shooting at the Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine Black members of the church dead.
- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two bombers in the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, which left six dead and hundreds seriously injured.
- Robert Bowers, the shooter in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, which left 11 congregants dead.