After spending more than three decades in prison, Kofi Modibo Ajabu believed he had exhausted all legal avenues to reduce his 240-year sentence.
Ajabu was a college student when he was convicted along with two other men in the March 1994 stabbing deaths of two Indiana teenagers and one of their friends in what prosecutors said was a botched robbery attempt. With no apparent routes for an appeal, Ajabu thought that he was out of options.
Then he received a letter from Orvan Mabie Jr., the foreperson of the jury that convicted him in August 1995.
“I do feel as the 29th anniversary of your trial nears you have paid dearly for your mistakes,” Mabie wrote in the May 2024 letter to Ajabu. “I know your file shows you are not eligible for parole, but I do wonder if you might be considered for clemency.”
So began what Ajabu’s family members concede is an unlikely effort to win a commutation of his sentence for his role in one of Indiana’s most notorious murder cases. Ajabu’s case also provides a window into the largely unpredictable use of clemency powers by presidents, governors, and some state parole boards — a topic that has taken center stage since President Joe Biden last month pardoned his son Hunter after his federal felony conviction, and reclassified the sentences of 37 federal death-row inmates to life without parole.
Because he was convicted in state court, Ajabu was required to make an application for commutation to outgoing Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who finishes two terms in office on Jan. 13.
Holcomb has only utilized his executive powers to grant clemency to nine incarcerated people in eight years. It’s unclear whether his successor, Gov.-elect Mike Braun, also a Republican, will use his clemency powers after taking the oath of office.
Capital B has reached out to Holcomb’s office and to Braun’s transition team for comment. The state’s parole board acts as a “fact-finding commission” for the governor in clemency cases by holding a hearing, evaluating “the nature of the offense, prior criminal history, institutional conduct, and best interest of society.”
“The ultimate decision to grant a clemency is the governor’s,” Gwendolyn Horth, chair of the Indiana Parole Board, told Capital B in an email.
A jury foreperson’s sense of guilt
Mabie wrote that letter to Ajabu after a near-death experience. The 76-year-old had a heart attack followed by cardiac arrest in June 2022, and said he felt compelled to act to address the burden he has carried for decades. He sent the letter to Ajabu, who is currently incarcerated at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.
Since Mabie’s letter came to light, Ajabu has received support for his clemency application from Indiana U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, and additional signatures have been added to an online petition that launched in 2018.
Clemency consists of pardoning a conviction or agreeing to resentence the petitioner based on their record post conviction. It has been a tool given to the executive office to keep the judicial branch in check, yet presidents and governors historically have not utilized the tool as often as they could during their term in office, advocates and lawmakers have said.
“I thank President Biden for heeding our calls and leading with compassion and I encourage him to continue using his clemency authority in the final days of his presidency,” said U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, in a statement after Biden’s December federal death row clemency announcement.
The role of clemency has emerged amid a broader national conversation about America’s rate of mass incarceration, which is among the highest in the world. In recent years, five states have enacted, while seven others have introduced, legislation giving elected chief prosecutors the authority to revisit past convictions and consider resentencing.
This shift is part of a larger effort to reform the criminal justice system, driven by rising concerns over wrongful convictions and the election of more progressive officials who have reconsidered how certain crimes such as low-level marijuana possession offenses are classified based on changing social values, rather than outdated and immutable laws.
Despite these efforts in other states, Indiana offers little to no relief for incarcerated people like Ajabu. The state has just one post-conviction review unit — launched in one county in 2021 — that can only review convictions stemming out of that jurisdiction.
Once all judicial remedies to challenge their convictions have been exhausted, those imprisoned face the harsh reality of spending the rest of their lives there, unable to correct what they see as a grave miscarriage of justice — something only the state’s governor has the power to address.
Read More: What the Road to Redemption Looks Like for Incarcerated People
In an echo of Biden’s commutation of federal death-row sentences, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the sentences of 15 state death-row prisoners to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Given the recent moves by Cooper and Biden, Ajabu’s family members and other supporters are optimistic that the Indiana Parole Board will recommend that the governor reduce Ajabu’s sentence to time served.
Supporters argue that commuting Ajabu’s sentence is justified because he would have been released from prison at least five years ago had he agreed to a plea arrangement with prosecutors during his trial in 1995.
Another compelling element of Ajabu’s case, supporters say, is the nature of his conviction. Ajabu was found guilty of felony murder — a charge in some jurisdictions where accomplices can be convicted and given the maximum sentence for a murder committed during the commission of another felony, even if they were not the one who actually took someone’s life.
Felony murder convictions have disproportionately affected young Black people, particularly those under 25, often leading to excessively longer sentences, according to a new report by The Sentencing Project.
“I didn’t want to convict [him] of murder,” Mabie told Capital B after Ajabu’s clemency petition was submitted in December. “But Indiana law, being what it was, he was a co-defendant. He was just as guilty as someone else who committed the murder.”
“The verdict, at that time, was correct,” he said. But he added, “That decision has haunted me for years.”
George Allemenos, 74, the father of Nick and Lisa Allemenos, said that he and his family initially supported sentences of life without parole for Ajabu and his co-defendants. “Let’s leave them in jail,” he said in a recent interview with Capital B, recalling how he felt in 1995.
But that view, he said, has changed. “At this point, if they [the prosecutors] asked me again, I’d say, ‘Go ahead, get the needle out.’” Allemenos said. “I’ve got no sympathy for them, their situation. They created living hell for so many people.”
“A horrible tragedy”
Ajabu, seen with his father, Mmoja Ajabu, has repeatedly expressed his regret for his role in the murders. “I am so sorry,” Ajabu wrote in his clemency petition. “That should have never happened.” (Courtesy of Nzinga Ajabu Harrison)
In the spring of 1994, Ajabu was 19 years old and a junior at Jackson State University, a historically black institution in Mississippi, studying to be a veterinarian. But instead of earning a degree, he was arrested and charged in connection with a triple homicide, known locally in Indiana as the Carmel murders, after the affluent community where the slayings took place. Ajabu was convicted with the two other men on three counts of felony murder and other charges.
One of the men, Raymond Adams, pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and was also sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The second man, James Walls, and Ajabu were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Before the murders, Adams and Walls were roommates. Ajabu met Walls when they began working together at a local restaurant.
Ajabu, now 49, has maintained for 31 years that he did not kill anyone, and he repeatedly expressed his regret for his role in the crime.
“I am so sorry,” Ajabu wrote in his clemency petition. “That should have never happened.”
Prosecutors said that on March 16, 1994, Ajabu and the other men went to the home of siblings Nick Allemenos, 17, and Lisa Allemenos, 13, with the intent to rob them and their 23-year-old friend, Chris James.
According to Ajabu’s sister, Nzinga Ajabu Harrison, Ajabu drove with Adams and Walls to the Allemenos’ house, where court papers say Adams went to buy drugs.
Adams went inside the house first, as Kofi and Walls waited outside in the car. Eventually, Adams invited them into the house, where they found three people tied up in the kitchen area.
Their bodies were found the next day with their throats slashed.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, man, that type of stuff, that’s not cool,” Kofi Ajabu said in an interview for a documentary about the case. As he wiped away tears, his voice cracked and choked up when asked about the day of the murders. “To see people killed like that. Cost me something. I lost. I lost something.”
Harrison understands how outsiders may question her brother’s account of the killings.
“How could you participate in the crime? How could you not ask for help? How could you not run away?” said Harrison, who is a psychiatrist. “The answer to that is really that protective, dissociative response in the face of life-threatening danger. … People hear fight or flight, but they don’t know the third part of that is freeze.”
“When he [Kofi] talks about ‘It was like I was in a hole and I was falling, but there was no bottom,’” Harrison said. “That is acute dissociation.”
Ajabu’s father, Mmoja Ajabu, started the Indianapolis chapter of the Black Panther Militia in the 1990s. During the murder trial, Mmoja Ajabu intimidated the prosecutor and the mother of one of the victims, who supported the death penalty for his son.
Mmoja Ajabu was later convicted on two counts of intimidation.
Kofi Ajabu’s clemency petition may be a long shot. But still, his family presses on.
“We understand that this was a horrible tragedy, and I hate that my brother was even there. However, my brother did not kill Nick, Lisa and Chris,” Harrison said. “We grieve with their family, friends, and community that we know are still and will forever be dealing with their loss. Our quest for clemency for my brother is in no way meant to diminish their feelings.”
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