Who is the Michigan prisoner spared death under Biden decision?

Myesha Johnson and Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News on Dec 23, 2024

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President Joe Biden's commutations Monday of federal prisoners sitting on death row included a Michigan man convicted of killing a woman he was accused of sexual assaulting and suspected in the deaths of at least three others.

Prosecutors said Marvin Charles Gabrion II killed Rachel Timmerman to prevent her from testifying against him .

Having obtained a death sentence in 2002 upon his conviction for murdering Timmerman, Gabrion long was projected to be the second person put to death in Michigan since the state became one of the first in the western world to ban the death penalty, 172 years ago.

Michigan outlawed the death penalty in 1847, but it is available under federal law. Federal prosecutors had the ability to charge Gabrion because Timmerman's murder occurred at Manistee National Forest, government property. The U.S. Justice Department at that time told prosecutors to ask jurors for the death sentence.

Two days before she was to testify against Gabrion in 1997 for allegedly raping her, Timmerman, 19, of Cedar Springs, just north of Grand Rapids, and her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon, were reported missing.

Authorities eventually found Timmerman’s body in the shallows of Oxford Lake.

Her mouth and eyes were covered with tape. Chains were wrapped around her body and padlocked. Federal prosecutors believe she was alive when she was put in the water.

Shannon, Timmerman's daughter, has never been found.

Gabrion is now 71 and on death row at a federal medical center in Missouri, according to the New York Times.

Prosecutors say Gabrion is also responsible for the deaths of three men who have been missing since about the time of Timmerman’s murder: Robert Allen, a mentally disabled man from Kent County; Wayne Davis, who allegedly witnessed the sexual assault on Timmerman; and John Weeks, who allegedly lured Timmerman and her daughter to Gabrion before her murder.

Allen's body also has never been found.

Gabrion has not been executed prior because of pending appeals. His appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was denied in August 2022.

Attorney General Dana Nessel, when asked about the commutations Monday at an unrelated press conference in Flint, noted Biden had made his position clear on the death penalty.

“President Biden has made it clear that, except for in certain types of aggravating circumstances, he doesn’t believe that the death penalty is appropriate,” Nessel said. “I think what we saw at the end of the Trump administration last time was sort of a rush to execute as many people as possible."

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