The father of an Atlanta federal prison guard who was killed 30 years ago said life in prison without parole is not an adequate punishment for the man who bludgeoned his son to death.

That man, Anthony George Battle, is one of 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted Monday by President Joe Biden.

“I don’t think it’s justice, but there is nothing I can do about it,” said Frederick Neil Washington, the father of D’Antonio Washington.

“I can say the way I feel, but they aren’t going to listen to me,” the 80-year-old told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution upon hearing the news.

Battle and Meier Jason Brown were the only Georgians on federal death row, and both got clemency. Their crimes, which juries deemed worthy of capital punishment, date to 1994 and 2002, respectively.

The commutations prevent incoming President Donald Trump from carrying out the men’s executions.

Anthony George Battle

In 1997, an Atlanta federal jury found Battle guilty of killing D’Antonio Washington, 31, three years earlier. Battle had already been serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting and killing his wife, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1987.

Battle, whose lawyers said he was schizophrenic, repeatedly struck Washington in the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer on Dec. 21, 1994. Prison employees found Washington lying on the floor “with blood spurting out of his head,” according to details provided in an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion affirming Battle’s death sentence.

The employees found Battle standing next to a nearby vending machine, his clothes splattered with blood, the document states. The bloodied hammer was found behind the vending machine.

Battle later confessed to killing Washington, telling federal agents that “he was ‘frustrated’ at (the prison) and that he was ‘tired of being bossed around,’” according to the opinion.

He told investigators that he “took the hammer and decided to attack the first correctional officer he saw,” according to court documents.

At trial, three prison guards testified about how the other inmates reacted to Washington’s killing and what effect a sentence of life without parole would have.

“When you went to enforce policy, they (inmates) would be walking around saying things like, ‘hammer time,’ or, ‘Don’t forget I got 20 years. I’ll be here every day with you.’ Basically, it was threats toward staff members,” one of the guards said, according to court documents. “Once they receive a lengthy sentence or life imprisonment, that’s all that can happen to them ... Without the death penalty, all prisoners, they believe there is nothing that can happen to them.”

Battle was given a chance at the end of his trial to ask jurors to spare his life. Instead, he told them that Washington “died like a dog,” the AJC previously reported.

He became the first Georgia man to receive a federal death sentence since Congress restored capital punishment in 1988.

Atlanta criminal defense attorney Jack Martin, who represented Battle at trial, said he was happy his client is no longer facing the death penalty.

“He was clearly mentally ill, and he should never have received the death penalty,” Martin told the AJC. “We are so thankful President Biden understood that. This is just another example of why the president’s commutation power is so important.”

But for Frederick Washington, it’s still difficult to think about his son’s death. While he agrees that there are some instances in which commuting a sentence is warranted, the killing of his son is not one of them.

”They don’t need to be in jail. They don’t need parole — depending on what they did, they need to be killed,” he said.

Meier Jason Brown

On the morning of Nov. 30, 2002, Brown showed up at a post office in Flemming, about 30 miles southwest of Savannah, and stole $1,175 in money orders.

As the robbery unfolded, Brown stabbed postmistress Sallie Gaglia 10 times as she tried to defend herself. He left the 48-year-old woman to die lying face down on the floor, the AJC previously reported. Her purse, which contained her wallet and had been on a chair by the desk, was missing.

Gaglia’s body was found by a customer.

Brown later admitted that he went to the post office to pick up his family’s mail but returned later to rob Gaglia.

“At the post office, Brown asked for three money orders. When Gaglia turned to use (a calculator), Brown put socks on his hands, jumped over the counter, and — according to Brown — tripped, fell into her and cut her with his knife,” according to court records. “He told police that at this point he decided he had to kill Sallie Gaglia because she knew him.”

Gaglia’s siblings testified at the 2003 trial about the horrific impact her killing had on the family. Her son, for example, was a senior in high school at the time and was “rendered emotionally incapable of going to college and joined the Army instead,” court documents state. Her husband was in therapy and so grief-stricken that he was unable to attend the court hearing.

“Sallie Gaglia was more than willing to help anyone, was an active member of her church, took care of (her) mother, and was devoted to her sons,” according to a court of appeals description of her family’s testimony. “They echoed that Gaglia’s murder was a great loss and that she could never be replaced.”

Several witnesses testified on Brown’s behalf, expressing disbelief at the murder charge, as the defense pleaded for the jury to spare his life. The witnesses painted a grim scene of Brown’s home life, detailing lifelong neglect and abuse, with countless instances of drug use and violence being a regular occurrence.

One of his teachers surmised that “he must have let an awful lot of anger out at that time that he had pinned up from all those years,” court documents state.

Another witness was Liberty County sheriff’s Detective Charles Woodall, to whom Brown had confessed to the killing.

Woodall said that “when Brown confessed to the murder, he was remorseful — sobbing and crying during most of the confession,” court records state, although he later admitted that during the confession, “Brown was saying that his own life — not the life of his victim — was over.”

In the end, the character testimony was not enough for the jury, and Brown was sentenced to death.

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