President Joe Biden announced Monday that he will commute the death sentences of 37 inmates, leaving only three death row inmates remaining in federal prisons.
The reduced sentence will be reclassified as life in prison without the possibility of parole, the White House said.
“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has placed on federal executions, except in cases of mass murder motivated by terrorism or hatred,” Biden said in a statement. “Make no mistake, I condemn these murderers, I mourn the victims of their despicable acts, and my heart goes out to all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.
“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I feel more strongly than ever that the death penalty must end at the federal level. I am confident,” Biden added in a statement. “In good conscience, I cannot silently allow the new administration to resume the executions I had stopped.”
The three people on federal death row include Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh; In 2015, Dylann Roof opened fire on a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people. and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers.
As a presidential candidate, Biden argued in 2019 that “the death penalty must be abolished.”
In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. No federal prisoners have been executed during President Biden’s term.
But the Justice Department announced earlier this year that it would seek the death penalty for a white supremacist who killed 10 black people in a 2022 shooting spree at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store.
In addition to the federal death penalty, about half of the states allow the death penalty. More than 20 people have been executed this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Approximately 2,200 people are on death row nationwide.
Billy Allen, one of the inmates whose sentences will be commuted by Biden, maintains his innocence.
“I want to believe he’s going to do the right thing,” Allen said of Biden in an interview last month, adding, “As an innocent human being, he should do the right thing sooner rather than later.”
Allen said he felt like his hope was “extinguished” when Donald Trump won last month’s presidential election. He wrote a final suicide note, explaining that he needed to “prepare for the worst.”
Around the time of President Trump’s election, some correctional officers at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, abused inmates, according to death row inmates and two federal defenders. The same official said execution rehearsals at the prison, where nearly all federal death row inmates are held, have increased in the run-up to President Trump’s inauguration.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment.
On the campaign trail, President Trump said he would urge the Justice Department to seek the death penalty for drug traffickers.
At the start of his 2024 campaign, President Trump said, “I intend to seek the death penalty for everyone who sells drugs and anyone caught selling drugs for their heinous acts.”
He also called for the death penalty for “immigrants who kill American citizens or law enforcement officers.”
During President Trump’s first term, 13 federal prisoners were put to death, all in the last six months of Trump’s presidency. Prior to that, the most recent federal execution was in 2003.
Kelly Henry is the federal defense attorney for Rejon Taylor, one of the inmates released from death row because of Biden’s actions. Henry previously represented Lisa Montgomery, who was executed at the end of the first Trump administration. She called the rapid pace of federal executions in the final stages of the Trump administration “brutal.”
“The best way to describe it is it was like the justice system was suspended,” she said in an interview last month.
Asked to comment on the use of the death penalty at the end of President Trump’s last term and his next plans, Caroline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for President Trump’s presidential transition, said she would stick to her campaign promise.
“President Trump meant what he said on the campaign trail: We will execute the death penalty for drug dealers who knowingly sell deadly poisons to our fellow citizens and criminal illegal immigrants who kill innocent Americans,” he said in a statement. ” he said. “He will fulfill these promises.”
Trump’s bid to expand the types of crimes for which prosecutors can seek the death penalty would require support from Congress, and any changes would likely face legal challenges.
This month, Biden commuted the sentences of about 1,500 nonviolent offenders and pardoned 39 more, saying in a statement that “America was built on possibility and the promise of second chances.”
Biden also pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was scheduled to be sentenced on federal firearms charges, and in a separate case where he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges. The president previously said he would not pardon his son.
NBC News reported that Biden is considering granting preemptive pardons to people he believes President Trump could legally target during his second administration.
Megan Lebowitz and Sarah Dean reported from Washington and Abigail Brooks from New York.
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