Two convicted murderers whose death sentences were commuted last month by President Biden asked a federal court Tuesday to keep them on death row, saying the clemency action could stall their appeals.

Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, who are on federal death row at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, have refused to sign paperwork that would reduce their sentences to life without parole.

They also have filed emergency motions in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana asking the court to prevent Mr. Biden’s reprieve from going into effect.

The two men say accepting clemency would put them at a legal disadvantage because they are appealing their convictions based on claims of innocence.

Lawyers for the pair say death-penalty appeals receive heightened scrutiny in which courts examine the cases more closely for potential errors because a convict’s life is on the line. If the men accept the pardon, they would lose that heightened scrutiny, defense attorneys say.

“To commute his sentence now, while the defendant has active litigation in court is to strip him of the protection of heightened scrutiny. This constitutes an undue burden and leaves the defendant in a position of fundamental unfairness, which would decimate his pending appellate procedures,” attorneys wrote in Agofsky’s filing.

Attorneys for Davis, meanwhile, wrote that “having a death sentence would draw attention to the overwhelming misconduct” they say took place by prosecutors in the case.

Both men say they didn’t want Mr. Biden’s commutation in the first place.

“The defendant never requested commutation. The defendant never filed commutation. The defendant does not want commutation and refused to sign the papers offered with the commutation,” Agofsky’s attorneys wrote.

The Justice Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Agofsky was sentenced to death in 2004 after he was convicted of stomping a fellow Texas prison inmate to death in 2001. Prior to that killing, Agofsky had been serving a life sentence on murder and robbery charges arising from the 1989 abduction and slaying of a bank president.

He claims he is innocent in the bank president murder case and disputes how the stomping death case was handled by prosecutors.

Davis is a former New Orleans police officer who was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill Kim Groves in 1994 after she had filed a complaint against him. He has argued that he’s innocent and that the federal court that convicted him did not have jurisdiction in the case.

The two were among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted last month in a controversial order by Mr. Biden. However, Mr. Biden declined to grant commutations to three federal death row inmates convicted of either high-profile mass killings or terrorist attacks.

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.