In his latest act of clemency, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly every incarcerated person on federal death row Dec. 23, including a Buncombe County man convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a Candler woman in 1994.
Richard Allen Jackson was convicted in the slaying of Karen Styles, a 22-year-old Western Carolina University graduate who set out for a jog in the Bent Creek Recreation Area near Lake Powhatan on Oct. 31, 1994. President Joe Biden commuted Jackson’s federal death sentence on Dec. 23, 2024.
Of the 40 people on federal death row, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
One of those whose sentence Biden commuted is Richard Allen Jackson, a Buncombe County man convicted of using a firearm on federal land in the kidnapping, sexual abuse and shooting death of Karen Styles, a 22-year-old Western Carolina University graduate.
Styles went missing Oct. 31, 1994, after going on a jog in Bent Creek Recreation Area near Lake Powhatan in Pisgah National Forest. Nearly a month later, a deer hunter found her partially nude body duct-taped to a tree near the Hard Times Trail, the Citizen Times previously reported.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a Dec. 23 statement.
He added: “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
The Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, though it’s widely believed that President-elect Donald Trump will resume executions during his second term. The Trump administration carried out 13 executions during his first term in office.
In response to the commutations, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung blasted Biden’s decision in a Dec. 23 statement, calling it “a slap in the face to victims, their families, and their loved ones.”
The three on death row whose sentences Biden did not commute were convicted of acts of terrorism or hate-motivated killings. The three include:
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Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine people in a 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel, a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina
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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of killing three in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing
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Robert Bowers, convicted of killing 11 people in a 2018 antisemitic mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh
This isn’t Biden’s first historic act of clemency.
On Dec. 12, Biden commuted the sentences of 1,500 federal inmates released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Keith Vinson, an area developer sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2015 for his role in a $23 million bank loan scheme. The White House described those commutations as “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”
A plea deal, and then a death sentence
Jackson, a dishwasher and adopted son of prominent community leader J.D. Jackson, was first sentenced to death following a trial in state court in 1995, the Citizen Times previously reported. The N.C. Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, ruling Jackson’s confession inadmissible.
The federal courthouse on Otis St.
When questioned at the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department in December 1994, Jackson, 25, had said he needed a lawyer present, but then-District Attorney Ron Moore allowed questioning to continue. Jackson later confessed to Styles’ murder.
Before Jackson could be retried, he pleaded guilty to a state charge of second-degree murder, first-degree rape and second-degree kidnapping and was sentenced to a minimum 25 years in prison.
The next year, in 2001, a federal jury convicted him of using a firearm on federal land in the shooting death of Styles, and recommended he be sentenced to death. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Jackson’s conviction and death sentence multiple times, most recently in 2022.
If he had remained in prison on state charges, Jackson, now 55, would likely have been released in 2023, according to the N.C. Department of Adult Correction. Jackson is currently being held in a high-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.
Styles’ mother, Katheryn Styles, did not respond to a Dec. 23 request for comment from the Citizen Times regarding the commutation of Jackson’s death sentence.
Karen Styles was 22 when she was murdered in October 1994.
Rev. Cari Willis, Jackson’s spiritual adviser, told the Citizen Times Dec 23 she’s “beyond thrilled” by Biden’s action.
“They’ve all been waiting for this for some time now,” said Willis.
“However, my heart goes out to the three men whose sentences were not commuted,” she added. “No one deserves to be executed. No one.”
While advocates applaud Biden’s act of clemency, many are also waiting to see if Gov. Roy Cooper commutes the sentences of the 136 people incarcerated on North Carolina’s death row.
Seven people from Buncombe County are currently on the state’s death row, according to the Department of Adult Correction. All were sent there between 1992-2000. The state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, as several challenges to how the state administers the death penalty continue to play out in court. Despite the de facto moratorium, death penalty opponents believe the state will resume executions in the near future.
“Governor Cooper has an historic opportunity to burnish his legacy with a very principled and courageous decision to commute the sentences of those on death row,” said Jake Sussman, chief counsel for justice system reform at Southern Coalition for Social Justice, in a Dec. 23 statement. “North Carolina’s death penalty system has long been plagued by racial bias, wrongful convictions, and disproportionate sentencing. Commuting the sentences of those on death row would reaffirm Governor Cooper’s commitment to fairness and justice, and set a powerful example for the nation.”
More: Death penalty conviction upheld in murder, rape of Karen Styles in Pisgah National Forest
More: Biden commutes sentence of Seven Falls developer Keith Vinson; convicted of wire fraud
Jacob Biba is the county watchdog reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY network. Email him at jbiba@citizentimes.com
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Biden commutes death sentence of Buncombe County man to life in prison