(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the death sentences of two convicted murderers and kidnappers, Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who were responsible for the death of Samantha Burns, a 19-year-old student from West Virginia.
In a heartfelt message posted on X, Manchin shared that he had spoken with Burns’s parents, Kandi and John Burns, who expressed their outrage at Biden’s “horribly misguided and insulting” decision to spare the lives of their daughter’s killers.
Burns, along with another victim, Alice Donovan, was killed during a 17-day crime spree after Basham and Fulks escaped from a Kentucky prison.
Manchin stated the Biden administration ignored the heartfelt letters from the Burns family pleading against the commutation.
Particularly since Samantha’s family wrote letters to President Biden & the Department of Justice, pleading for them not to do this, but their concerns were unheard. I can’t imagine the grief that Kandi and John Burns are reliving and dealing with during the holiday season. (2/3)
— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) December 26, 2024
“I can’t imagine the grief that Kandi and John Burns are reliving and dealing with during the holiday season,” Manchin wrote. “As their U.S. Senator and a father, I want to express my deepest sympathy for their continued suffering.”
He added, “Please know that Samantha will forever be in our prayers.”
Burns went missing on Nov. 11, 2002, and was last seen at the Huntington Mall in West Virginia. Law enforcement officials later located her burned car in a secluded area, but her body was never found.
In July 2005, Fulks and Basham pleaded guilty to federal charges of carjacking resulting in death to avoid the death penalty in connection to Burns’s case. The two men escaped Hopkins County Jail in Kentucky in November 2002.
They were sentenced to death for the murder of Alice Donovan, whom they killed in South Carolina.
Angie Gilchrist, Donovan’s daughter, expressed her outrage over the commutation, saying: “I am so appalled. I am disgusted at what you did. You (Biden) have hurt so many people.”
She added, “We allowed it to go through the court system, looking for justice and resolution through the court system, just to be smacked in the face by you signing this clemency.”
Gilchrist stated her family had “been through hell. We’ve been through hell and back.”
The family of Donna Major, a beloved bank teller who Brandon Council murdered during a 2017 robbery, also expressed their outrage over the commutation of his death sentence.
“I was angry. I’m still angry,” Major’s daughter, Heather Turner, said. “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 have been through, what we are going through.”
