In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Taylor saw new signs of life all around him. Biden had granted clemency to 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, an unprecedented move that none of them expected. One of his neighbors, a man who long ago seemed to have “fallen into an abyss in his fractured mind, never to return again,” suddenly appeared lucid, talking to Taylor instead of the voices in his head. “He even cleaned up his cell today, something he NEVER does. … He now has hope, despite a life sentence! I’m amazed!”

The sense of renewal was shared by men like Charles Hall, whose years on death row had been especially punishing. In a six-page letter to Biden, he vowed that the decision to grant clemency “will not be wasted on me.” Hall had earned a paralegal certificate while on death row and he planned to continue his education, he wrote, adding that change and positivity are possible “even behind razor wire, fences, walls, and bars.”

The outpourings of gratitude came amid a flurry of activity inside the Special Confinement Unit at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Men sorted their belongings and packed their things. They had been told that the unit would likely be shut down and its residents transferred to other prisons. No one knew precisely when this would happen — or where they might end up — but it was best to be prepared. Prison transfers are notoriously disruptive, taking place with no advance notice, and sometimes lasting months.

Yet not everyone was eager for a new beginning. Within days of the announcement, two men had sent handwritten emergency petitions to a federal court in Indiana seeking to block the commutation of their death sentences. Neither of them had applied for clemency and both were adamant that they did not want it, arguing that it threatened to derail their efforts to prove their innocence in court. One of them decried Biden’s commutations as a “publicity stunt.” This week a third man, Iouri Mikhel, similarly objected to Biden’s reprieve.

While people on death row are automatically entitled to legal representation, those serving life without parole are not.

The challenges are a long shot to say the least. “The Court harbors serious doubt that it has any power to block a commutation,” a federal judge wrote in response to the first two filings. But the lawsuits also lay bare a sobering reality for most people who go from facing a death sentence to a life sentence with no chance of release. While people on death row are automatically entitled to legal representation, those serving life without parole are not. And for those who harbor even the faintest hope of overturning their convictions, a commutation can foreclose on legal avenues that once made it possible. This is true even for those who do not claim to be innocent but have challenged their convictions on other grounds, from ineffective advocacy by trial lawyers to racial bias to official misconduct.

With Taylor and his neighbors facing a lifetime behind bars — and with more questions than answers about what will happen next — the mood in Terre Haute has shifted. The initial wave of celebration has given way to anxiety over........

© The Intercept