Shannon Agofsky was convicted of two separate murders, twelve years apart, in three different courts. The first was the death of Dan Short, the president of a bank in Noel, Missouri, on October 6, 1989. The second was the death of a fellow federal prisoner, Luther Plant, on January 5, 2001. For Short's death he was convicted in federal court in Missouri in 1992 and in a state court in Oklahoma in 1997, and he received life sentences in both. For Plant's death a federal jury in Texas sentenced him to death in 2004, and the Fifth Circuit upheld that sentence in 2008.
The death sentence no longer stands. On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and Agofsky's was one of them. He opposed it. He went to a federal court in Indiana to try to stop the commutation, and between January 2025 and January 2026 the federal courts rejected his challenges. One question connects the two deaths: whether the § 924(c) conviction from Missouri could be undone, and with it a finding that supported the sentence in Texas.
Dan Short was the president of the bank in Noel, Missouri. He was 51.
On October 6, 1989, the bank in Noel was robbed. Prosecutors said that Shannon Agofsky and a co-defendant carried out the robbery together. Short died the same day in Oklahoma, near Grove, in Delaware County. The robbery was in Missouri and the death in Oklahoma, which is why the case went through both a federal court in Missouri and a state court in Oklahoma.
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Missouri indicted Shannon Agofsky on three counts: aggravated bank robbery resulting in death, under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a), (d) and (e); an offense under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A); and conspiracy, under 18 U.S.C. § 371. He was tried with a co-defendant. In 1992 a jury convicted him on every count, and the district judge sentenced him to life plus 60 months.
He appealed. The Eighth Circuit heard the case in 1994 under the title United States v. Agofsky, 20 F.3d 866. The court affirmed the convictions. In 1997 the sentencing court denied a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and the Eighth Circuit later denied three requests for permission to file a second or successive motion.
Short had died in Oklahoma, so Oklahoma had its own jurisdiction over the killing. The state trial was moved from Delaware County to Payne County on a change of venue, and in August 1997 Shannon Agofsky stood trial there for first-degree murder, together with the same co-defendant. District Judge Sam Fullerton presided. A guilty verdict could bring the death penalty.
The jury convicted Shannon Agofsky, then 26, of murdering Short. It could not agree whether he should receive the death penalty or a prison term, and Judge Fullerton imposed life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, to run on top of the life sentence he was already serving for the robbery. For the co-defendant, the jury could not reach a verdict on the murder charge, and prosecutors declined to retry him.
A challenge to the Oklahoma conviction came back to court in 2012, when Agofsky filed a post-conviction motion in Delaware County. The Oklahoma Attorney General's Office asked the judge to dismiss it, arguing that it was an attempt to attack the federal death sentence in Texas through the state case. A spokeswoman said that no hearings had been set.
By January 2001 Agofsky was serving his life sentence in the federal system. On January 5, 2001, Luther Plant, a 37-year-old federal prisoner, died at a federal prison in Texas. The FBI opened an inquiry, and a week later, on January 12, 2001, Agofsky, then 30, was named as the suspect and as someone who could face the death penalty. He was charged that month.
The federal indictment was brought in the Eastern District of Texas. It charged two counts, both arising from one death: Murder by a Federal Prisoner, under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1118 and 1111, which covers premeditated murder by a person serving a life sentence; and Federal Murder, under 18 U.S.C. § 1111, which covers premeditated first-degree murder. The prosecutor was John B. Stevens, Jr., and the defense lawyer was Patrick Black.
The case was tried before a jury in 2004. The jury convicted Agofsky on both counts and, in the penalty phase, returned a death sentence on each. It found aggravating factors, among them the Missouri conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). The district judge accepted the findings and imposed the sentence.
One finding in the jury's paperwork became the centre of the first appeals. In a special finding the jury answered "no" when it was asked whether Agofsky had intentionally killed Plant, although it did find the statutory gateway factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3591(a)(2).
Agofsky appealed to the Fifth Circuit, and the court decided the case on July 28, 2006, in United States v. Agofsky, 458 F.3d 369, No. 04-41219. Judge Benavides wrote for a panel that also included Judges DeMoss and Prado. The panel held that entering two murder convictions for one death violated the guarantee against double jeopardy, and it vacated both convictions and remanded the case so that the government could elect which count and which death sentence to keep. The court rejected his argument that the special finding was inconsistent with the guilty verdict.
On remand the government chose the count of Federal Murder, and the district court sentenced him to death on that count. He appealed again, and on January 31, 2008, the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Owen for a panel that included Judges Garza and Stewart, affirmed the judgment and the death sentence. It held that the law-of-the-case doctrine and the reasoning of its first decision stood, and that a defendant cannot ask a court to set aside a verdict because it is inconsistent with a special finding. The court found the jury's findings were not irrational.
After the direct appeals, Agofsky filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the Eastern District of Texas, in a case numbered 1:07cv511. He claimed ineffective assistance by his trial and appellate lawyers. Two former attorneys gave their files to his current counsel, the third lawyer's files had been destroyed, and all three declined to meet current counsel. The government asked the court to order the former lawyers to answer the allegations by affidavit; Agofsky asked for depositions instead. The court granted affidavits and denied depositions, and on his motion to reconsider, filed February 11, 2009, it again ruled against him.
The motion, filed in 2008, was still pending in the Eastern District of Texas in January 2025.
The Missouri conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) was the link between the two cases. In 2022, while he was confined in Indiana, Agofsky filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the Southern District of Indiana. Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Borden v. United States (2021), he argued that bank robbery is not a "crime of violence" under § 924(c). If that was right, the Missouri § 924(c) conviction fell, and with it one of the aggravating factors that supported the death sentence in Texas.
While the petition was pending, the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Hendrix (2023), which overruled the Seventh Circuit's In re Davenport exception to the limits on § 2255 motions. The district judge, James R. Sweeney II, ordered Agofsky to show cause, rejected his argument that capital cases deserve an exception, and dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction. Agofsky appealed in 2024, as Agofsky v. Baysore, No. 24-1067.
On December 23, 2024, shortly after oral argument in that appeal, President Biden announced that he was commuting 37 federal death sentences "to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole". Agofsky's was among them.
He opposed the commutation. In an emergency petition in the Southern District of Indiana he said that he had not asked for it, did not want it, and had refused to sign the papers, and he argued that he would lose the heightened scrutiny that courts apply to death-penalty cases in his post-conviction challenges. In an order of January 17, 2025, the court denied his motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissed the action with prejudice, citing Biddle v. Perovich (1927) for the rule that a prisoner's consent is not needed for a commutation. Counsel appointed for him conceded that the court had no power to block it.
On November 26, 2025, the Seventh Circuit, by Judges Rovner, Sykes and Kirsch, decided the appeal in Agofsky v. Baysore. The court held that § 2255(e) limits a court's subject-matter jurisdiction, overruled its earlier decision in Harris v. Warden and similar cases, and affirmed the dismissal of the § 2241 petition. His remaining argument had been that the government waived the point. On January 23, 2026, the court denied his petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc.
Agofsky is serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on the commuted Texas sentence, on top of the earlier federal and Oklahoma life sentences. His section 2255 motion in Texas, which challenges both the conviction and the sentence, was still pending in January 2025.
The Texas case was prosecuted under a federal statute that applies to prisoners. Count 1 charged murder by a federal prisoner serving a life sentence under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1118 and 1111, and Count 2 charged premeditated first-degree murder under § 1111. The Fifth Circuit treated the two counts as the same offense for double-jeopardy purposes. For that reason, the 2006 decision left the government with a single conviction and a single death sentence to defend.
The White House said the action did not apply to cases involving "terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder."
The Texas jury answered "no" to the question whether Agofsky intentionally killed Plant, while convicting him of premeditated murder. The Fifth Circuit held in 2006 and 2008 that this was not a ground to set aside the verdict or the sentence.
His claim that the Missouri § 924(c) conviction no longer qualifies as a crime of violence was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, not decided on its merits.
October 6, 1989: Dan Short, bank president of Noel, Missouri, dies in Oklahoma during a bank robbery
1992: Shannon Agofsky convicted in W.D. Mo.; sentenced to life plus 60 months
1994: Eighth Circuit affirms the convictions (20 F.3d 866)
1997: Section 2255 motion denied; Payne County, Oklahoma, murder trial; convicted; life without parole
January 5, 2001: Luther Plant dies at a federal prison in Texas
January 2001: Agofsky charged in the Eastern District of Texas
2004: Convicted on two counts; death sentences recommended and imposed
July 28, 2006: Fifth Circuit vacates both convictions for double jeopardy and remands
January 31, 2008: Fifth Circuit affirms the death sentence on the count of Federal Murder
2008: Section 2255 motion filed in the Eastern District of Texas
2012: Post-conviction motion in Delaware County, Oklahoma
2022: Section 2241 petition filed in the Southern District of Indiana
December 23, 2024: Death sentence commuted to life without parole
January 17, 2025: Indiana court denies his motion to block the commutation
November 26, 2025: Seventh Circuit affirms dismissal of the 2241 petition
January 23, 2026: Rehearing denied