The U.S. has halted federal executions. Here are the 46 men on death row in Terre Haute.

Sarah Nelson
Indianapolis Star

The United States halted federal executions this month, making news across the country but hitting home more so in Indiana – where the death sentences are carried out.  

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on executions while officials review the Justice Department's policies and procedures related to the deaths. The news came after former President Donald Trump’s administrationpushed through 13 death sentences in less than a year during the last months of his presidency.

Here are the 46 men on federal death row whose trip to the execution chamber were paused. IndyStar included prisoners whose death sentences have been reversed, but are not final. 

Federal executions:A look at who was put to death and the heinous crimes they committed

James Roane Jr. 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 28 years 

Date of murder(s): 1992 

Summary: Roane is one of three co-defendants and fellow gang members convicted in the spree of 11 murders that took place in Virginia. Roane was implicated in three of the slayings.  

Richard Tipton

State of conviction: Eastern District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 28 years 

Date of murder(s): 1992 

Summary: Tipton is one of three Richmond gang members convicted in series of drug-related murders that happened in a span of 45 days. Tipton was convicted in six of the murders.  

Len Davis

State of conviction: Louisiana  

Time on death row: 24 years 

Date of murder(s): Oct. 13, 1994 

Summary: Davis was a New Orleans Police officer under internal investigation for his suspected involvement in a number of crimes, including assisting drug dealers and violating the rights of civilians. In 1994 the FBI intercepted phone calls during which Davis talked about killing New Orleans resident Kim Groves after she filed a complaint against him with the then-Internal Affairs Division of the New Orleans Police Department. Despite that, the FBI was unable to stop the killing. Davis contacted Paul Hardy and told him he wanted the woman killed, according to the FBI. Hardy shot Groves once in the head on Oct. 13, 1994. She died on the scene. Davis was sent to death row for his role in the crimes. Hardy received a life sentence. 

Anthony Battle 

State of conviction: North District of Georgia 

Time on death row: 24 years 

Date of murder(s): Dec. 21, 1994 

Summary: A jury convicted Battle for bludgeoning prison guard D'Antonio Andrew Washington to death with a ball-peen hammer in Atlanta he'd obtained from a mechanical services work crew. Battle was already serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife, a U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Minnie Foreman. Foreman was stabbed to death in her barrack room on the Marine Corps Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina on March 9, 1987, according to court records

Jeffrey Paul 

State of conviction: Western District of Arkansas 

Time on death row: 24 years 

Date of murder(s): June 22, 1995  

Summary: Paul and an acquaintance followed an 82-year-old man from downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas to a trail in Hot Springs National Park. Paul and Trinity Ingle then robbed, beat and shot the man.  

Aquilia Barnette

State of conviction: Western District of North Carolina 

Time on death row: 23 years 

Date of murder(s): June 21, 1996 

Summary:Barnette carjacked a 22-year-old Donald Lee Allen near the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport then robbed him at gunpoint in nearby woods. He shot the man in the back. Barnette then drove the man’s car to Roanoke and broke into his ex-girlfriend's home that she shared with her mother. He shot the Robin Williams in the back as she ran away toward her mother.  

Billie Jerome Allen and Norris Holder

State of conviction: Eastern District of Missouri 

Time on death row: 23 years 

Date of murder(s): March 17, 1997 

Summary: The two men were found guilty and given a sentence of death for the fatal shooting of Richard Heflin, a security guard at Lindell Bank & Trust in St. Louis, during a robbery.  

Richard Allen Jackson

State of conviction: Western District of North Carolina  

Time on death row: 20 years 

Date of murder(s): Oct. 31, 1994 

Summary: Jackson confessed and was later convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 22-year-old Karen Styles going for a jog in Asheville. A hunter found the 22-year-old woman’s body duct-taped and partially naked to a tree, with a gunshot wound to the head.  

From the archives: Retrial in Karen Styles killing 

Marvin Gabrion II

State of conviction: Western District of Michigan 

Time on death row: 19 years 

Date of murder(s): 1997 

Summary: A jury convicted Gabrion in 2002 for the killing of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman. Timmerman and her baby girl Shannon went missing days before Timmerman was to testify after accusing Gabrion of rape. Timmerman was found in a shallow lake in Michigan and her daughter Shannon has never been found. The killing became a federal case after prosecutors believed it occurred in Manistee National Forest. 

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Julius Omar Robinson 

State of conviction: Northern District of Texas 

Time on death row: 19 years 

Date of murder(s): Dec. 1998 - May 1999 

Summary: A jury convicted Robinson, who went by the nickname "Scarface," of the murders of Johnny Lee Shelton and Juan Reyes and of complicity in an ongoing criminal enterprise resulting in the death of a third person, Rudolfo Resendez, according to court filings. Robinson — a wholesale drug dealer then operating in five states – killed Shelton in a case of mistaken identity. Juan Reyes was shot to death at close range on the driveway in front of his home. He was not the intended target. 

Gary Sampson 

State of conviction: District of Massachusetts

Time on death row: 4 years

Date of murder(s): 2001

Summary: Sampson admitted to killing three men in a random killing streak in Massachusetts. Police wanted him in connection with a series of bank robberies, and he’d evade them by carjacking vehicles then killing their drivers so they wouldn’t identify him. Sampson killed Jonathan Rizzo, Philip McCloskey and Robert Whitney  

Read moreDeath sentence imposed, again, on Gary Lee Sampson

Meier Jason Brown

State of conviction: Southern District of Georgia 

Time on death row: 18 years 

Date of murder(s): Nov. 30, 2002 

Summary: Brown stabbed a postal worker to death 10 times while robbing a post office in Fleming, Georgia. He tried to steal three money orders and a wallet, according to the Savannah Morning News. 

Chadrick Fulks and Brandon Basham 

In a Tuesday, April 12, 2005 file photo, Chadrick Fulks is escorted by U.S. Marshals out of the federal courthouse in Huntington, West Virginia.

State of conviction: District of South Carolina 

Time on death row: 17 years 

Date of murder(s): Nov. 14, 2002 and Nov. 11, 2002 

Summary: Fulks and Basham carjacked, kidnapped and killed two women in the midst of a 17-day crime spree after they escaped a county jail in western Kentucky. A jury recommended the death sentence for Fulks and Basham in the kidnapping and murder of a 44-year-old Alice Donovan of South Carolina. The men also received life in prison for the death of 19-year-old Samantha Burns of West Virginia, whose body has never been found. Basham and Fulks kidnapped Donovan from a Walmart parking lot. It wasn’t until 2009 that Fulks helped police find her remains, according to news reports

Shannon Agofsky 

State of conviction: Texas Eastern District Court 

Time on death row: 17 years 

Date of murder(s): Oct. 6, 1989 

Summary: A jury handed Agofsky a death sentence in the beating death of 37-year-old Luther Plant, an inmate at a federal penitentiary in Texas in 2001. Agofsky was already serving a life sentence for robbing a Missouri bank along with his brother, Joseph. The brothers kidnapped the bank president Dan Short early Oct. 6, 1989 and forced forced him to open the bank. They stole more than $70,000 before driving him to Oklahoma, where they tied Short to a cement-weighted chair and threw him into Grand Lake, according to the Springfield News-Leader

Nasih Ra'id 

State of conviction: Northern District of Indiana 

Time on death row: 17 years 

Date of murder(s): 2002 

Summary: Ra’id, formerly known as Odell Corley, was sentenced to death for a bank robbery in Porter that ended in the death of two bank employees.  

Ronald Mikos 

State of conviction: Northern District of Illinois 

Time on death row: 18 years 

Date of murder(s): Jan. 27, 2002 

Summary: Mikos, a podiatrist, shot Joyce Brannon six times in her church basement apartment to prevent her from testifying against him in a federal Medicare fraud case. Mikos was convicted in May 2005. Prosecutors said he shot the nurse and former patient, who was invalid, six times at point-blank range, the Associated Press reported.

Edward Leon Fields Jr. 

State of conviction: Eastern district of Oklahoma 

Time on death row: 18 years 

Date of murder(s): July 10, 2003 

Summary: A judge sentenced Fields, a former Oklahoma state prison guard, to death in the killing of Charles and Shirley Chick at a campground in Ouachita National Forest. He scouted the couple at the campground in a homemade sniper suit and shot them with a rifle.  

Murderer sentenced: Why Fields killed Charles and Shirley Chick 

Kenneth J. Lighty 

State of conviction: District Court of Maryland

Time on death row: 18 years 

Date of murder(s): Jan. 23, 2002 

Summary: Lighty, along with three others, carried out a kidnapping of 19-year-old Eric Hayes – an alleged PCP dealer and son of a Washington D.C. police officer.  

Kenneth Eugene Barrett 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Oklahoma 

Time on death row: 18 years 

Date of murder(s): Sept. 24, 1999 

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Summary: In response to a no-knock warrant by police of his home, Barrett shot and killed Oklahoma state trooper David “Rocky” Eales – who joined authorities’ drug raid. A federal appeals court reversed his death sentence this year for ineffective assistance of counsel. He awaits a resentencing. 

Son testifies: Details shared during Barrett's trial 

Robert Bolden 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Missouri 

Time on death row: 15 years 

Date of murder(s): Oct. 7, 2002 

Summary: A St. Louis federal jury handed Bolden, a Canadian citizen, a death sentence in the murder of Nathan Ley, a Bank of America security guard.  Ley, 25, was shot twice at close range outside the bank and died hours later, according to news reports at the time

Daryl Lawrence 

State of conviction: Southern District of Ohio 

Time on death row: 15 years

Date of murder(s): Jan. 6, 2005 

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Summary: Lawrence shot and killed Columbus police officer Bryan Hurst during an attempted bank robbery. Lawrence had been convicted of at least two other bank robberies in Ohio. Hurst, 33, was working special duty at the Fifth Third Bank when Lawrence entered with a drawn handgun and killed the officer during an exchange of gunfire, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., of Crookston, listens as his attorney whispers to him during a preliminary hearing on March 5, 2004, in Grand Forks, N.D. Rodriguez was convicted in 2005 of kidnapping and killing University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin.

State of conviction: District Court of North Dakota 

Time on death row: 15 years 

Date of murder(s): Nov. 22, 2003 

Summary:  Rodriguez plucked college student Dru Sjodin, 22, from a mall in Grand Forks and killed her. Her body was found in a ravine near Crookston, Minnesota five months later. Because the crime crossed state lines, prosecutors tried him in federal court. Rodriguez was a convicted sex offender at the time of the murder. 

Jurijus Kadamovas and Iouri Mikhel 

State of conviction: Central District of California 

Time on death row: 14 years 

Date of murder(s): 2001-2002 

Summary: The two men were convicted in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme targeting affluent Russian immigrants that left five people dead. Three accomplices pleaded guilty and testified at the trial. Prosecutors said the men received more than $1 million in ransom. Whether the ransom was paid or not, the pair murdered the people they kidnapped, tied their bodies with weights and dumped in the New Melones Reservoir near Yosemite National Park, the Associated Press reported

Carlos Caro 

State of conviction: Western District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 14 years 

Date of murder(s): 2003 

Summary: Caro was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his cellmate Robert Sandoval – who prison guards found strangled in their cell at the United States Penitentiary, Lee. Caro had been serving a 30-year sentence for drug charges.  

Thomas Morocco Hager 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 14 years 

Date of murder(s): Nov. 29, 1993 

Summary: A jury sentenced Hager to death for his role in the stabbing death of a 19-year-old single mom in her apartment. Three men, including Hager, entered Barbara White’s apartment that night and stabbed her 82 times. Hager’s accomplices said they worked for Hager, a crack cocaine dealer at the time, and received life sentenced after testifying against him. 

Rejon Taylor 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Tennessee 

Time on death row: 13 years 

Date of murder(s): Aug. 6, 2003 

Summary: Taylor abducted Atlanta restaurant owner Guy Luck from his driveway, then shot him on a rural road in Tennessee. Prosecutors said Taylor had been involved in a string of robberies in the neighborhood and knew Luck was planning to testify against him.  

Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez Jr. 

State of conviction: Southern District of Florida 

Time on death row: 12 years 

Date of murder(s): Oct. 13, 2006 

Summary: Troya and Sanchez shot and killed a family of four, including two toddlers, on the Florida Turnpike to settle a drug debt with the father of the family. The family had moved to Palm Beach County weeks before the murders.  

Read more about the case and killers

Joseph Ebron 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Texas 

Time on death row: 12 years 

Date of murder(s): May 5, 2005 

Summary: Ebron had been found guilty of helping in the stabbing death of fellow inmate Keith Davis at a federal prison in Beaumont. Ebron held Davis while another inmate stabbed him 106 times. That inmate later killed himself in prison. The conviction in Davis’ death was his third murder he’d been found guilty of in 15 years.  

David Runyon 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 12 years 

Date of murder(s): Runyon was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by a Navy officer’s wife and her boyfriend, who wanted her husband Cory Voss killed for his $500,000 life insurance policy. Runyon shot Voss five times outside an ATM. Catherina Voss and her boyfriend received life sentences.  

Alejandro Umana 

State of conviction: Western District of North Carolina 

Time on death row: 11 years 

Date of murder(s): Dec. 8, 2007 

Summary: Umana, a member of a gang, had dinner at a Greensboro restaurant when him and two other patrons who did not belong to the gang “exchanged words.” Prosecutors said Umana then pulled a semi-automatic pistol and shot the two brothers in the restaurant. Ruben Garcia Salinas and Manuel Garcia Salinas were killed. 

Mark Snarr and Edgar Garcia 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Texas 

Time on death row: 11 years 

Date of murder(s): Nov. 28, 2007 

Summary: Mark Issac Snarr, of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Edgar Balthazar Garcia, of Abilene, Texas, were being transported to their cells in a federal Texas prison when the duo slipped from their hand restraints, pulled out homemade knives and stabbed two correction officers. They took the cell keys from a guard’s belt and unlocked the cell of fellow inmate Gabriel Rhone. They stabbed him over 50 times. Rhone later died.  

Kaboni Savage 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Pennsylvania 

Time on death row: 8 years 

Date of murder(s): 1988-2004 

Summary: A jury recommended a death sentence for Savage for 12 murders he committed and directed in the late 1980s through 2004. He ordered a firebombing of the home of Eugene Coleman, a federal witness at the time. The arson left six people dead, including for children.  

Jorge Torrez 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Virginia 

Time on death row: 7 years 

Date of murder(s): July 11, 2009 

Summary: A federal jury convicted Torrez in the premeditated murder of 20-year-old Navy Petty Officer Amanda Snell while she slept in her barracks. Torrez’s convictions connected in the murders of three women, one of whom he raped, influenced the jury to hand him a death sentence. After receiving his death sentence, prosecutors filed murder charges against Torrez in the murders of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias in 2005 at a Zion park. DNA evidence linked Torrez to the attack, which also exonerated Laura Hobbs’ father who spent five years in prison for the murders after giving a false confession.  

Charles Hall and Wesley Coonce 

State of conviction: Western District of Missouri 

Time on death row: 7 years 

Date of murder(s): Jan. 26, 2010 

Summary: Coonce and Hall were handed death sentences in the murder of fellow inmate Victor Castro-Rodriguez at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. The duo targeted Castro-Rodriguez because he previously intervened to help a Bureau of Prisons Employee being attacked by another inmate. Coonce was already serving a life sentence for kidnapping and carjacking that involved the rape of a woman. Hall was serving his sentence for making threats against a federal judge and federal prosecutor. 

Read moreTwo Fed Med inmates sentenced to death in killing

Thomas Sanders 

State of conviction: Western District of Louisiana 

Time on death row: 7 years 

Date of murder(s): Sept. 8, 2010 

Summary: Sanders was sentenced to death for the kidnaping and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana. Sanders, declared dead by his family after not surfacing for months, met Suellen Roberts in 2010 while living in a storage facility in Las Vegas. The two agreed to visit a wildlife park in Arizona. On the way back to Nevada after their travels, Sanders pulled over to the side of the road and shot Roberts in the head. He took 12-year-old Lexis Roberts to Louisiana, where he shot her and cut her throat.  

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 

In this courtroom sketch, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, second from right, sits between his defense attorneys during closing arguments in Tsarnaev's federal death penalty trial Monday, April 6, 2015, in Boston.

State of conviction: District of Massachusetts 

Time on death row: 6 years 

Date of murder(s): April 15, 2013 

Summary: Known as the Boston Marathon bomber, Tsarnaev planted pressure cookers with help from his brother. Three people died in the bombings and hundreds injured. An appeals court in Boston overturned his death sentence in July 2020 after the court said the judge at his trial did not ensure the jury was unbiased against him. “Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in the ruling, according to the Associated Press.  

Dylann Roof 

Dylann Roof

State of conviction: District of South Carolina 

Time on death row: 4 years 

Date of murder(s): June 17, 2015 

Summary: Roof opened fire during a Bible study class at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. He killed nine parishioners. Roof had previously told friends he wanted to start a race war.  

Ricky Fackrell and Christopher Cramer 

State of conviction: Eastern District of Texas 

Time on death row: 3 years 

Date of murder(s): June 9, 2014 

Summary: Cramer and Fackrell stabbed fellow inmate Leo Johns at the federal prison in Texas. All three men were members of the white supremacy group, Soldiers of the Aryan Culture.  

Brandon Council 

State of conviction: District of South Carolina 

Time on death row: 2 years 

Date of murder(s): Aug. 21, 2017 

Summary: A federal jury in South Carolina recommended a death sentence against Council for carrying out an armed robbery at a CresCom bank and pulling the trigger on a teller and bank manager – killing them both.  

Contact Sarah Nelson at sarah.nelson@indystar.com or 317-503-7514.