(DailyVantage.com) – The family of a South Carolina woman who was murdered during a 2017 bank robbery is expressing outrage after President Biden commuted the death sentence of her killer, Brandon Council, just days before Christmas. Donna Major, a 59-year-old bank teller, was one of two women killed in the cold-blooded crime, which has left her family reeling during the holiday season.
Council’s sentence was among 37 federal death row cases commuted to life imprisonment without parole by Biden earlier this week. The decision has sparked a wave of anger from victims’ families, who feel they were excluded from the process and that justice was not served.
Major’s daughter, Heather Turner, expressed her frustration on Fox & Friends, saying, “I was angry. I’m still angry. I am upset that this is even happening, that one man can make this decision without even talking to the victims, without any regard for what we’ve been through.”
Donna Major and her coworker, Kathryn “Katie” Skeen, 36, were shot and killed by Council during a bank robbery in Conway, South Carolina. Major’s husband, Danny Jenkins, recounted the horrific details, describing how Council entered the bank, said nothing to Major, and shot her three times before killing Skeen, who was also defenseless.
“She was shown no mercy,” Jenkins said. “This man never gave her a chance. And now, he’s been given mercy he never showed his victims. I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
President Biden defended his decision to commute the sentences, stating it aligned with his administration’s moratorium on federal executions except in cases of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder. However, this explanation has done little to console Major’s family.
Katie Jenkins, another of Major’s daughters, criticized the lack of communication with victims’ families, saying, “The fact that he [Biden] didn’t talk to any of us… we trusted the judicial system. We sat through court. I watched my mother be murdered. And now, he’s shown compassion for a criminal instead of us.”
The family had attempted to meet with officials to share their perspective, sending letters to the pardon attorney and requesting an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C. According to Turner, their requests were denied, and they were instead given a brief virtual conference that she felt was ineffective. “They did not want to hear our story,” she said.
Council’s commutation comes as part of Biden’s broader efforts to eliminate federal executions. Notably, only three federal death row inmates were excluded from the commutations: Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, and Dylann Roof, who killed nine African Americans in a Charleston church in 2015.
The Major family continues to grapple with their loss and the president’s decision, feeling that the justice they sought for Donna has been stripped away.
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