President Joe Biden announced Monday that it was commuting the sentences of 37 of 40 people serving federal sentences. death rowconverting their sentences to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of expanding capital punishment, took office.
This decision spares the lives of those convicted of murders, including killings of police and military officers, people on federal lands and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as murders of guards or prisoners in federal institutions.
This means that only three federal inmates remain at risk of execution. They are Dylann Roof, who committed the 2015 racist murders of nine black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
“I have dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people sentenced to death on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has placed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders.
Reaction to the president’s year-end act of clemency has been strong, particularly among those who were victims of Roof.
Michael Graham, whose sister Cynthia Hurd was killed by Roof, wants him to die for his crimes and was grateful that Biden kept him on death row. He said Roof’s lack of remorse and latent white nationalism in the United States mean he is the kind of dangerous and evil person for whom the death penalty is intended.
“It was a crime against a race of people who were doing something that every American does on a Wednesday night: going to Bible study,” Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were black.”
Felicia Sanders, who protected her granddaughter while watching Roof kill her son Tywanza and her aunt Susie Jackson, sent her lawyer, Andy Savage, a text message calling Biden’s decision not to spare Roof’s life a wonderful Christmas gift.
The Biden administration announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment in 2021 to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during Biden’s term. But Biden had actually promised to go further on the issue in the past, pledging to end federal executions without the reservations about terrorism and hate-motivated mass killings.
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While running for president in 2020, Biden’s campaign website said he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and to encourage states to follow the example of the federal government.
Similar language did not appear on Biden’s re-election website before he left the presidential race in July.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable actions, and I ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses,” Biden’s statement said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the level federal. »
He launched a political attack on Trump, saying: “I cannot in good conscience stand back and let a new administration resume the executions I stopped.” »
Trump, who takes office on January 20, has frequently spoken of an increase in executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous actions.” He then promised to execute drug and human traffickers and even praised China’s harsher treatment of drug traffickers. During his first presidential term, Trump also advocated for the death penalty for drug traffickers.
There have been 13 federal executions during Trump’s first term, more than under any president in modern history, and some may have occurred quickly enough to have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus down the hall of Indiana federal death.
These were the first federal executions since 2003. The last three occurred after Election Day in November 2020, but before Trump left office the following January, the first time federal prisoners were put to death by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
Biden has recently faced pressure from advocacy groups who have urged him to act to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The president’s announcement also comes less than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of about 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on house arrest during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 39 others convicted of non-violent crimes, the most significant act in a single day. of clemency in modern history.
The announcement also follows the post-election pardon Biden granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges after long saying he would not grant one, sparking an outcry in Washington. The pardon also raised questions about whether he would issue wide-ranging preemptive pardons to administration officials and other allies who the White House believes could be unfairly targeted by Trump’s second administration.
Speculation that Biden might commute federal death sentences intensified last week after the White House announced plans to visit Italy on the final foreign trip of his presidency next month. Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayer for American death row inmates in the hope that their sentences will be commuted.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has long called for an end to the death penalty, said Biden’s decision is an “important step in advancing the cause of human dignity in our nation” and brings the country closer to “building a culture”. of life. »
Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Biden to change the death sentences, said in a statement shared by the White House that the president “did what no president before him was willing to do: take action meaningful and lasting, not only to recognize the racist roots of the death penalty, but also to address its continuing injustice.”
Madeline Cohen, lawyer for Norris Holder, who faced death for the 1997 fatal shooting of a guard during a St. Louis bank robbery, said his case “reflects many flaws in the system” and thanked Biden for converting his sentence to life. prison. Holder, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury.
“Norris’ case illustrates the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the president to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said.
Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by one of the men whose death sentence was converted, said the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would not have brought me any peace.”
“The President did what was right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also released by the White House, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”
—Weissert reported from West Palm Beach, Florida. Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri, contributed to this report.