Former federal death row prisoner moved to South Carolina

Officials took a former death row prisoner from his cell in Terre Haute and transported him to South Carolina over the weekend.

Brandon Council, 40, is now likely to face state charges for a 2017 double murder that resulted in his original federal death sentence.

Former President Joe Biden reduced that sentence to life without parole in a mass clemency decision last year. But prosecutors in South Carolina have indicated in recent months that they were considering re-charging Council with the murders of two bank tellers, Donna Major and Kathryn Skeen, in the 2017 armed robbery.

The move would be in line with an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in January ordering U.S. justice officials to assist state prosecutors interested in re-trying Biden clemency recipients in jurisdictions with the death penalty.

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While the U.S. Constitution prohibits trying someone twice for the same crime, state and federal governments are considered “separate sovereigns,” meaning they can individually prosecute defendants.

U.S. prison bureau records showed Council was no longer in federal custody as of Sunday. He has been booked into the J. Reuben Long Detention Center in Conway, South Carolina, about 15 miles from Myrtle Beach. No charges were listed, and it wasn't immediately clear if Council had retained new attorneys.

Officials took Council from his cell in Terre Haute on Friday, according to messages to WFIU/WTIU News from two prisoners still on federal death row.

One of the prisoners, Chad Fulks, who was also sentenced to death along with a co-defendant for unrelated murders in South Carolina, wrote that he and other prisoners feared state officials were "going to do the rest of us the same way, show up in the middle of the night and ship us off."
 

Council is the latest prisoner to be transferred off federal death row. Last week, the U.S. prison bureau moved eight Biden clemency recipients to ADX Florence in Colorado, widely considered to be the most secure and restrictive prison in the federal system.

All eight were being held on death row at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, where all federal executions are carried out.

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Prosecutor Jimmy Richardson did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the weekend but a local NBC affiliate reported that Richardson confirmed he intended to refile charges, likely on Tuesday.

In October 2019, Richardson dropped state charges against Council after a federal jury convicted him and returned a death sentence.

“The charges were dismissed with leave to restore at a future date if necessary,” Richardson said at the time.