Michigan’s Only Death Row Inmate’s Sentence Commuted to Life in Prison

A Michigan man who was facing death after being convicted of a 1997 murder will now instead be spending the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

This all comes after President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is commuting the death sentences of nearly all of the prisoners in the country who are currently on death row.

⬇️Michigan Prison Escapees Who Have Never Been Found⬇️

In a release, the White House announced that of the forty individuals across the United States who were facing death, thirty-seven of them will be changed to sentences of life in prison without parole.

The only three that will remain on death row were convicted of crimes related to "terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder." Those three are Dylann Roof (who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015), Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bomber), and Robert Bowers (who killed eleven people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.)

The Kidnapping and Murder of Cedar Spring, Michigan's Rachel Timmerman

While Michigan does not have the death penalty (and hasn't since 1846), there is one prisoner in the state who was on death row. That person is 71-year-old Marvin Gabrion II, who was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman in 1997 and is suspected of kidnapping and murdering her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon Verhage.

READ MORE: Michigan's Missing - Three Decades Later, Where is Gordon Page?

If this crime occurred in Michigan, then how did he end up being sentenced to death? While the kidnapping and murder of Rachel (and perhaps Shannon) happened in Michigan - it's where in the state that it occurred that resulted in the death penalty. Shannon's body was discovered in Oxford Lake, which is located in the Huron-Manistee National Forest - federal land.

Since, prosecutors argued, the murder took place on federal property, it violated federal law, which put the death penalty on the table. He was Gabrion was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002.

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The kidnapping and murder of Rachel Timmerman and the kidnapping and disappearance of Shannon Verhage were featured in season 10, episode nine of 'Unsolved Mysteries'.

Shannon Verhage of Michigan Still Considered Missing After 1997 Kidnapping

Shannon Verhage, Rachel Timmerman's 11-month-old daughter, has never been found and is listed on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NAMUS) registry as missing. She was last seen leaving her home with her mother in Cedar Springs, Michigan on June 3, 1997. According to a report by FOX-17, Gabrion claims that he did not kill her (or her mother.)